


Maybe I Don't Want Heaven

by inkfingers_mcgee



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, Lovers to Friends, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27750451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkfingers_mcgee/pseuds/inkfingers_mcgee
Summary: Zuko does not realize that he wants to break up with Mai until she says, “We need to talk about us,” with an unmistakable finality, and the candles around his meditation mat don’t even flicker.(He has always been slow to revelation.)Or,Five years after ascending the throne, Zuko reaches yet another crossroads of self. Sokka helps him through it. Mai incites national legislative reform.
Relationships: Mai & Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 53
Kudos: 153





	1. What We Both Need

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a lot of Big Feelings about being gay lately: about dealing with comp het, coping with a homophobic society, and navigating the complexity of only realizing you’re queer once you’re an adult. I wanted to try to touch on those issues, and hopefully I'm doing it in a way that’s relatable and cathartic rather than unnecessarily angsty lmao.
> 
> also a friendship between gay Zuko and lesbian Mai is something that can be so personal-
> 
> but mostly it’s gonna be Zukka with a sprinkle of Mailee cause I'm a hopelessly romantic bitch, and I, like you, am here for #escapism

Zuko does not realize that he wants to break up with Mai until she says, “We need to talk about us,” with an unmistakable finality, and the candles around his meditation mat don’t even flicker. 

(He has always been slow to revelation.)

The flames tremble as he exhales heavily through his nose, ending his breathing exercise early. “What about us?” he asks. It isn’t what he wants to say. He doesn’t _know_ what he wants to say.

“Look at me, Zuko.”

He does. Mai stands in the center of the room, one more lovely red shape in the lavish interior of Zuko’s chambers. Her arms fold into her sleeves, shoulders set slightly back, lush hair cutting vertical lines through the diagonals of her fine robes. Sharp as ever, she watches him from the shadow of her bangs, but it isn’t an angry look.

She sighs in that put-upon way of hers. “You know that this has been over for a while, don’t you?”

Zuko feels his brow twitch toward betraying something— he still has no idea what, unable to name a single feeling despite dozens of them bubbling up from his gut— but draws himself back to neutrality. “Yeah.”

Mai nods, glances off. When she looks back, her eyebrows have settled into a low, harsh line. “Aunt Mura is on me constantly about when we’re going to get married.”

 _That_ plucks an identifiable feeling out of Zuko’s gut and brings it wriggling up his throat: panic. 

“But we’re not going to get married,” Mai continues. She draws one hand out of her sleeve, only to pick at the fabric’s grey cuff. “Unless you have a proposal coming that I don’t know about.”

“No!” He says it too fast, too loud. Mai’s eyes widen slightly. Gritting his teeth, Zuko pushes to his feet. “I mean- no. I wasn’t going to…” Agni’s sake, he can’t even say it.

Mai shrugs. “Then it doesn’t make any sense to stay together.”

“I guess not.”

“I’m not angry, Zuko.”

The rasp in her voice draws his eyes away from her sleeve, where she’s begun to unravel some tailor’s careful work, to the dark of her eyes. 

“I never said you were.”

Mai sighs again. “I just want you to know. Those times I told you what you mean to me, I meant it.”

Zuko nods, and tries to swallow down the ache pushing up from his chest.

“But I’d hate myself if I stayed with you.”

“Well, I don’t want you to hate yourself,” Zuko says quietly. 

“You’d hate yourself, too.” Her somber expression sharpens into a small smirk, the kind Zuko only notices because he knows her so well. “And, honestly? You’re a lot easier to deal with now that you’re not as hard on yourself.”

“Oh, I’m still hard on myself.” He cracks just a corner of a smile, but Mai’s mouth flattens out, so he clears his throat and his expression. “Really, Mai. It’s fine. You’re right.” He crosses his arms, realizes he’s mirroring, then uncrosses them and lets them hang at his sides. “I probably should have said something first, huh?”

Mai scoffs, not unkindly. “I did tell you never to break up with me again.”

A real smile takes Zuko’s lips at that, and Mai answers it with a rare laugh. 

“We were stupid fucking kids,” she says.

Zuko snorts. “Yeah, the stupidest.” He’s spent no shortage of hours wishing he could grab that angry, burned kid he was and shake him by the shoulders until he saw sense. He doesn’t know how Uncle put up with him. Or Mai, for that matter. “Not that being with you was stupid!” he amends a beat late, half-reaching for her. “It’s been… really good.”

She tsks at him. “You don’t have to flatter me, Zuko. I’m not your girlfriend anymore.”

That should make him sad. Shouldn’t it make him sad? “I’m not flattering. Just trying to tell you that- I don’t hate you, too.” 

She glances up and away, huffing in that way Zuko knows is meant to dispel a smile. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

They stand in silence, Mai looking off as if considering the gilded moulding of the baseboards, Zuko watching her subdued profile against the black relief of her hair.

“So,” he says, “was that all?”

Her eyes flick back to him, and her brows arc towards her bangs. “You have something to add?”

“I-” He steps forward, beginning to reach for her, then stops. “No. I guess not.”

She shrugs. “Okay, then.” She slides her errant hand back into the opposite sleeve, and executes a formal bow over her folded arms. Then she turns to go, like that’s that. 

A breath before her fingers touch the handle of Zuko’s door, before the heavy wood and stone and metal slam behind her, Zuko says, “Wait!”

Mai spins. A few strands flutter from the pinned-up portion of her hair, and her eyes catch, widened, on Zuko’s, a glimpse of uncertainty. Maybe, Zuko realizes, he is not the only one in this room who’s off-kilter.

Years come to him, whole seasons represented in snips of memory, seconds of time that somehow encompass an entire life between two people: leaning his shoulder against hers on the shores of Ember Island, pausing to let her fix his hairpiece and get a reassuring kiss before he stepped into what used to be his father’s war room, letting his fingers relax between hers when every other muscle he had thrummed tense, her hand the only constant in a rush of faces and agendas and decisions.

“I want to stay friends,” Zuko says to Mai, his voice scraping.

She stares back at him for a moment. It stretches between them, and it must not be as long as it feels, surely. The silence fills Zuko’s skull, a creature with its hackles up to seem larger. He wants to shout, _”Well?”_ but he doesn’t, because he isn’t sixteen anymore.

Finally, Mai rolls her eyes. “Of course we’ll stay friends, Zuko.”

“Oh.” The tension crowding his lungs eases. Just like that. “Okay. Uh, that was it.”

Mai’s expression flickers from rigidity, first a slight quirk of one eyebrow, then an almost imperceptible shift of her jaw. Finally, she blooms into a smile that she rarely reveals, her real one. _”Like getting a tigerdillo to show its belly,”_ Azula once said.

“Thank you, Zuko,” says Mai, and then she leaves.

Zuko thinks, in the silent moments after, that maybe he should be more distressed than he is. He snuffs his meditation candles with a flick of his wrist. Ringed by lazy curls of smoke, he stands still and grapples with a peace that he still can’t trust after all these years— even though that peace rises through him like the last sulfurous gasps of these candles, light and warm and gathering at his highest point. He can’t believe this is _right_. But maybe it is. A lot of things have been.

He arrives at his first appointment of the day a few minutes late. His head attendant, Yuna, waits at the door of the meeting hall. She smiles when she sees him. 

“You look well today, My Lord.” She makes the sign of the flame and dips into a bow. “May I ask what has you in such a good mood?”

He blinks at her. “My girlfriend broke up with me.”

—

Zuko rarely eats alone.

His duties encompass everything from organizing international aid to giving the final word on which shade of red the roof of the newest cultural center would be. Despite his efforts to deconsolidate power and create more elected positions to decide the future of their nation, there are still thousands of daily mundanities to handle, issues to be addressed, harms to be healed. He has to remind himself sometimes, as he stumbles to bed with his shoes still on and more problems to solve than he woke up with, that a hundred years of turmoil cannot be soothed in five. 

Given this volume of responsibility, his schedule barely fits between the dawn and dusk that the fire nation considers business hours. Meals, an unavoidable break in his agenda, often have to be filled with courtesy calls to dignitaries, or last-minute briefings with ambassador’s assistants, or concerns from community artists who have decided they _don’t_ actually want the statue of Ozai removed from their town square, because someone shrouded it in poignant graffiti and it makes a _statement_ now. 

Even after five years on the throne, Zuko spends most of his days adrift in disbelief at the sheer amount of people laying their faith directly on his shoulders. Sooner or later, his knees will give under the weight, and everyone will finally stop to ask why they trusted him, of all people.

Today, he collapses into his seat in the dinner hall and tries to focus on what’s in front of him: a clear lava-onion soup so spicy he can feel it in his sinuses when he inhales. The chef, Suzuk, stands by the door, his broad shoulders tipped slightly forward as he leans in, expectant eyes on Zuko.

“It, uh, looks amazing.” He doesn’t know why he can’t cough up a genuine-sounding compliment; it really does look amazing, but the words come out so uneven. Normally, one of his guests compliments the chef.

Suzuk, spirits bless him, beams. It’s a nice smile, angular in the squarish frame of his jaw, pinching the skin at the corners of his eyes like little fans spreading. Zuko has always noticed that smile, noticed Suzuk. He remembers, faintly, catching glimpses of Suzuk over a decade ago: head bowed, limbs drawn close to his body, ready to bolt if Father’s eyes fell unfavorably on him.

“My Lord?” Suzuk asks, stepping forward. “Is there a problem?”

“What?” Zuko blinks at the chef. Agni, he’s been staring. “No. Sorry. A lot on my mind.”

Stepping back, Suzuk’s smile softens. “I’m sure.” His tone gentles, overtly conspiratorial. Zuko lets it lie.

He turns his attention to the table instead, and furrows his brow as he notices that his is the only place set. “Where’s Yuna? She hasn’t briefed me on who I’ll be eating with.”

Suzuk’s eyes widen slightly, then he gets that look, the one that’s completely neutral except for the wane of his pupils into terrified little pinpricks— the one that Zuko has come to expect when the veteran members of the staff have to tell him something bad.

“This is traditionally Mai’s day, My Lord.”

There it is: that distress Zuko thought he should have felt before. His shoulders tense toward his ears, and he finds himself clenching his spoon with every intention to snap it. He manages to relax his grip a bit, but he’s helpless to unlock his upper back.

“Right,” he says lightly. “I forgot.”

Suzuk nods, looking a little shaken. “Do you want to… talk about it?”

“No!” Zuko snaps, and Suzuk jumps. The hunger he brought with him to the table tangles into something else, a sickly weight in his gut. “I’m sorry. That was- very poor manners.” He stands and gives a sign of the flame, a tilt of his head. “I apologize.”

Eyes wide again, Suzuk returns the gesture with a lower bow. When he stands upright, Zuko takes him in, his silver temples and momentarily relaxed laughter lines, and wonders, not for the first time, what his father did to this man to make him so skittish in the presence of the golden headpiece.

Dropping back to his cushion, Zuko sighs heavily. “Suzuk, have you eaten yet?”

And that’s how he ends up defending his life choices to the palace chef over the midday meal.

“It was mutual,” he says as he passes the side of fried noodles. “We both agreed it was for the best.” He reclines on one arm, a leg tucked under him and the other listed off to the side of his cushion.

Chuckling, Suzuk plucks a generous knot of noodles from the dish. He takes his bite, then says out of the corner of his mouth, “Congratulations on the first truly mutual breakup in Fire Nation history.”

Zuko scoffs a high, offended noise. “It _was_!”

“I believe you,” Suzuk says simply. He takes a sip of his tea in a calculated way that makes Zuko think he does not, in fact, believe him.

“It was the right decision!” Zuko insists. Suzuk nods into his cup, eyes closed. “As soon as she said it, I knew she was right.

Suzuk’s eyes open, brows lifting. “So she broke up with you.”

“She- brought it up.” He admits in a grumble.

“And then it became mutual.”

“Yes.” At that, Suzuk lets it drop.

The high walls of the Fire Palace are something Zuko used to think he missed. Rocked by uncaring nights on the ocean, he used to gaze at the metal box he slept in and drift into fitful dreams of the ship’s walls compressing around him, drawing closer and closer until he heard his own bones grinding to fine ash.

Now, his eyes flit over the towering planes of red, every inch embellished with delicate embroideries that had surely taken a hundred artisans a hundred thousand hours, and he finds himself thinking of the dingy back room of the Jasmine Dragon.

He swallows his last bite of lava-onion and says, “We’re going to stay friends.”

Suzuk glances up, as if he forgot Zuko was there. “Hmm, I know that one. Take it from someone with a bit of experience: it’s better to just cut things off than try to force a friendship.” He frowns. “It’s a kindness to kill a dying thing quickly.”

That lodges itself right between Zuko’s ribs, inches from where his heart squeezes horribly. “We’ve been friends since we were children,” he murmurs.

Suzuk nods, hums lowly. “I remember seeing all of you playing. That acrobatic girl, and-” he hesitates, “-your sister.”

Azula was Fire Lord for less than a day. Zuko wonders if she had time to terrorize Suzuk personally.

Abruptly Suzuk stands from his cushion, wincing as he straightens his back. “All the more reason to let things end gracefully,” he says, beginning to stack his dishes. “One can honor history without repeating it in the present.”

A small laugh jumps to the top of Zuko’s thoat. “Thank Agni.” Suzuk chuckles.

He helps Suzuk clear the table after only a bit of resistance— “My Lord, there’s no need-” “It’s no trouble. Hand me that dish?”— then thanks him for the company and the advice. Once he can stall no longer, he gathers a deep breath and pushes through the dining hall doors to face the rest of his day. 

As the sun begins to drift westward from its zenith, the feeling that buoyed Zuko that morning (which he has since identified as relief) grows laden with something new. The average day leaves him an anemic amount of time for his own thoughts, but today the pauses feel long. The tap of every servant’s and dignitary’s departing steps chills him, leaving him vulnerable to the spread of an unavoidable truth through his wrung-out limbs: he is alone, now. 

Not truly alone, of course. He’s rarely further than a stone’s throw from a member of his staff, and if the midday meal was any indication, he shouldn’t count them out for company. But that’s- sad, isn’t it? Only spending time with people paid to hover at his side?

He glances across the meeting room where his advisors currently drone on, and he can’t help but remember his friends in these seats: Toph’s feet propped on the grand meeting table, Momo lazing in the afternoon sun. His father traditionally conducted all business out of the throne room, intending the trench of flame and the imposing architecture to intimidate his subordinates, but Zuko had no use for that. In those early days of his reign, when Team Avatar were in and out of the palace like they lived there, they had all agreed that this room was a good location to conduct general business. It was large but not excessive, had good acoustics, and boasted east-facing windows that warmed the space in the mornings and let it cool at night. He can still see Aang sitting in the window bay, light settled over him, smiling gently at the gardens outside while Katara and Sokka filled the room with good-natured bickering.

He couldn’t have survived those first few months without his friends. As he came down from the staggeringly hopeful experience of his coronation, the enormity of his commitment began to sink in. Increasingly he found his jaw clenched behind his smiles, and he watched the shadow beneath his good eye grow heavier and heavier from rising before the sun more often than not. They had won, but it could still crumble under his watch. Here he was, ruler—Firelord, _shit_ —in a palace where half the rooms harbored ghosts. He couldn’t stand to enter any of the royal chambers, and came to have his own rooms at the end of the residential wing traditionally meant for guests- though even there, familiar shadows passed the windows in the small hours of the morning, despite it being the second floor.

Katara was the one who noticed he wasn’t sleeping. She prepared him a hideous-smelling Southern Water Tribe remedy and eagerly watched him drink it, whether with the concern of a healer or with the vindictive delight exclusive to younger sisters everywhere, Zuko wasn’t sure. He gagged so hard that he teared up. Sokka laughed so hard that he also teared up, and Zuko still remembers the sound, ridiculous and pitchy and the first happiness these halls had heard in years.

Friends were a strange concept for him. Each casual brand of affection still surprised him: a hug from Aang or Katara, a pat on the back from Sokka, a punch in the arm from Toph. They supported him in every way, from saving him from awkward conversations at social events, to giving their input on how to restructure the Fire Nation’s government after a century of tyranny had ravaged it. Seeing them all, people from every corner of the world, sharing and laughing and learning from each other under the roof of the Fire Palace, never failed to leave Zuko slightly dizzy. 

Their varied insights gave him a lot to consider. Sokka and Katara taught him about the chief and council system of the Water Tribes and how they differed between the North and South. Aang’s enthusiastic descriptions of the Air Nomads, tinged with only a hint of longing, sounded near-utopian. Once, Toph began to discuss the structure and interstate relations of the Earth Kingdom’s cities with such salience that Zuko, completely blindsided, yelled, “Wait, I thought you were raised by boar-q-pines or something!” 

It took a while to wrangle the meeting from the grip of hysterical laughter. Once the giggles died down and Zuko overcame his disbelief, Toph was proud to share her insights. She gave him so much to think about that he found himself running to the library in his off time, searching for the old books on governing and policy that he’d definitely stained with naptime drool as a child.

He pushed an elephant-koi-sized amount of reform when he ascended the throne. He organized relief programs, proposed reparation plans, rewrote military policy, and scrubbed the schoolbooks of propaganda.

Sokka helped him assemble A Panel for Propaganda Annihilation (APPA, he declared proudly), and they gathered scholars and historians from each nation to help brave the tangle of lies, misinformation and legend that had grown over the last hundred years. Nearly every day saw Sokka bringing Zuko another faded scroll, bright-eyed and ranting about an incredible story or person or discovery that had been lost to time. Together, they made sure that there were exhaustive lessons on Air Nomads pushed into every Fire Nation school. When Zuko handed Aang a scroll containing the details of the project, Aang’s watery “Thank you,” almost broke him.

Eventually the dust settled. Zuko started to sleep through the night, and the first of the new legislations rolled out smoothly. The Fire Nation was, by all outside accounts, in good hands. So, Zuko’s friends began to leave. 

Toph split first, declaring the Fire Nation “smelly” and “full of blazing bozos” as she tried to wipe her tears with her sleeve before anyone noticed. Aang left soon after, planning to meet back up with Katara and Sokka in the South Pole once he finished some official Avatar business. Approximately eleven hours passed before Appa landed on the palace steps again. Aang bounded down from the saddle lamenting that he couldn’t be without Katara, and at about the same time, Katara burst through the palace doors, shouting, “Wait! Aang! I’ll go with you!” 

Zuko missed the whole thing, but Sokka regaled him with thrilled disgust, sticking his tongue out like a ten-year-old anytime he had to refer directly to their relationship, or, spirits forbid, their incessant hand-holding. 

“And they call each other sweetie!” he cried, voice high and in danger of cracking. “Constantly! Why, if not to torture me, personally? Why does the universe torment me, Zuko?” 

Zuko laughed until he knew he was red in the face. “You make it really easy,” he choked out, and Sokka started to laugh, too. The moment forms so clearly in his mind’s eye that he can’t believe it happened half a decade ago.

Once Katara’s plans changed, Sokka decided to wait to charter his boat to the South Pole until he knew Katara had been there for a while. “I feel like she needs time with our dad,” he explained, avoiding Zuko’s eyes. Zuko didn’t press him. 

So, Sokka stayed the longest. He helped Zuko formulate proposals and practice speeches (though he was worse at public speaking than Zuko was). They trained in the evenings sometimes, and though the advantage was generally Zuko’s, Sokka was a quick study and got him on the ground with a blade to his chest more than once. Of the many meals they ate together, very few passed without a vehement argument about whose culture had better food. (Obviously it was Zuko’s, but sometimes it was easier to let Sokka win.)

When the letter finally came announcing that Katara was back in the Southern Water Tribe, Zuko had to swallow his disappointment. Sokka chattered about all the things he missed about home, and took an absurd amount of time to pack because he kept pausing to talk with his hands. Zuko sat on the floor and gazed up at his friend, and tried to be happy for him.

The day they said goodbye in the harbor, Sokka radiated sunlight. He threw his arms around Zuko, squeezed him tight, and Zuko scrunched his eyes shut and pressed his face hard into Sokka’s shoulder and willed it not to end. Sokka had to pat his back a few times before he was able to let his arms fall. It was so fucking hard to smile as Sokka ascended the gangplank, but he did, because Sokka was smiling back at him. It hadn’t hurt, not this bad, when the others left. Why was it so different? Maybe, he thought, it was because he’d had someone to turn to after he gave his farewells, every other time. This time, he had no one.

Well. He had Mai, of course. She was there through all of it, and remained long after everyone else had gone. She spent the years visiting him between his obligations, lounging with him when he had a rare afternoon off, accepting the treats and trinkets he collected for her when he didn’t know what to say. They talked sometimes, mostly Mai making dry comments and Zuko trying to give a funny reply with varying degrees of success. Their true achievement was their silence: a well-worn thing, tailored to the shape of their affection, woven bit by bit over years of established connection.

He dreads the years it will take to build up something like that with someone new. The thought of dating someone else shoots cold panic through his limbs, making his palms sweat. He can’t even think of a woman he’d want to date. He’s hardly had eyes for anyone but Mai. Spirits, what if his advisors want to arrange a marriage for him? He could say no, right? Surely he—

“My Lord,” Yuna says to his left.

Zuko jumps, snapping back to the present, where the advisors have begun to disperse. “Huh?” he says in what he hopes is a very dignified and intelligent way.

Yuna serves him a sympathetic smile. “Did you want me to pull those documents that Advisor Mon mentioned?”

“Uh- yes, the documents. You can- um-”

“You didn’t catch any of that meeting, did you?” Yuna asks gently.

Sighing, Zuko covers his face with one hand. “No.” He lets the hand slide down his face and drop into his lap. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“I figured.” She hands him a thin scroll. “I got the minutes for you.”

“Have I told you that you’re incredible, and I can’t live without you?” He accepts the scroll, and she grins.

“Not today.”

“Well,” Zuko huffs, standing from his seat, “you’re incredible, and I can’t live without you.” Those words hanging between them, standing so close, it occurs to Zuko that Yuna is a woman. She’s a woman he is fond of and enjoys spending time with. She always wears her hair in interesting ways, with jeweled pins here and there, bringing out the faint hints of brown in the near-black. Her smile is pleasant. She has a… nice body, he supposes, though he’s never felt good about assessing women that way. Regardless, she’s a perfectly acceptable woman overall. If she didn’t work for him, would he want to date her?

The thought makes his stomach lurch.

“Oh!” she says, thankfully consulting a sheaf of paper in her hand and not noticing his staring. “I almost forgot. This came for you.” She produces a sealed message scroll from her bag and presents it to him. “Special delivery.”

Three delicate swirls adorn the center of the ocean-blue seal. He takes it immediately, thumb twitching to crack the wax.

“Is there time-?”

“You’ve got a few minutes before your next appointment,” Yuna says, smiling. “I’ll get you when it’s time.”

“Thank you,” he says faintly, and drops back into his seat as she closes the door behind herself, leaving him alone in the hall.

A breath of salt and whale-walrus oil rises from the scroll when he opens it. He finds himself smiling before he’s even read a word.

_Dear Fire Lord Zuko,  
I am writing to announce my father Hakoda’s official retirement from his role as Chief. The council have asked me to take up the mantle in his place, and I could not be more honored. _

_There should not be much day to day change in the operations between our tribe and the Fire Nation, but I would like to advise you of one big change: I have appointed Sokka as the new ambassador to Caldera City. He is excited to begin working with you, and will arrive at the end of the month._

_I hope this news has found you well. Sokka and I are full of optimism for the continued collaboration of our homelands. Aang says “Flameo!” Give Mai my best._

_Warmly,  
Chief Katara of the Southern Water Tribe_

Zuko stares at the letter, the strokes on the page carrying all the hope and promise and growth that they’ve worked so hard for. He runs his thumb across the edge of the parchment, focuses on the crinkle of it. It’s a new era for the Southern Water Tribe, and his friend Katara is joining him as a world leader. It should all be very heady.

Instead, his eyes keep flitting back to the word _Sokka_. 

He’s reading the letter for the third time when Yuna comes back for him. 

“Good news?” she asks, brows lifting.

 _Sokka_ the parchment says. Zuko murmurs, “Yeah.”


	2. Truth Runs Wild

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw homophobia. please visit the end note for more information.
> 
> as promised, i did some editing of the first chapter, and i also switched around the chapter titles and finally settled on a fic description that i actually like. thank you for putting up with this truly “in progress” work lmao.
> 
> also those of you familiar with the comics may notice that i’m incorporating their version of Mai and Tom-Tom’s family situation, and literally nothing else. To you, i say: mind ya business

Shade lays gentle over the pond. Sunlight slips by here and there to kiss the water, little points of glittering light, but the heat can’t reach this place. Zuko likes that about this part of the garden: he can cultivate his chi to warm himself, or breathe his inner fire down to a flicker until his awareness of his fingertips blurs into the mild afternoon.

Of course, he likes the turtle ducks, too.

Little peeps rise from the bush at the edge of the pond. Zuko feels himself smile. He cracks his good eye to peek, and sees the mama looking right at him, ever-suspicious.

“Don’t mind me,” he murmurs, closing his eye. “I’m not here.” He sits cross-legged in the grass, hands resting palm-up on his knees, body at rest (or as near as it’s going to get). His shoes, mantle and outer robe lie in a careful stack on a bench at the entry to the garden, allowing the breeze to gather around the cuffs of his rolled-up pant legs and into his open tunic.

It’s his first time off since he and Mai split. For eleven days, he stumbled through his schedule on the momentum of normalcy, held together by inertia and chi-boosting tea. It was Yuna who noticed him winding tighter and tighter, spirits bless her. This morning, she came to him with poorly acted distress: _”Oh no, My Lord! It seems I’ve made a scheduling mistake and you have an empty hour here. I guess you’ll just have to spend it meditating in the royal gardens while we do damage control here.”_

Zuko thanks Agni for her, not the first time today.

He’s drawn from his reverie when little splashes fill the courtyard, hardly louder than his breathing. He waits as the sounds drift forward, paddling and peeping. Finally, his stillness pays off; a wet bill touches the backs of his fingers.

“Uncle Zuko?”

“Augh!” Zuko flinches halfway out of his skin, and it’s all he can do not to scorch the scattering turtle ducks. He spins, heart pounding. “What the fu—“

Tom-Tom stands in the garden’s archway, his eyes huge. One chubby fist clutches a plain brown sack.

“Don’t say fuck in front of my brother.” Mai’s low, fried voice hasn’t changed in the last eleven days. Somehow, Zuko thought it would. She stops behind Tom-Tom (who is still giggling about the word fuck) and rests a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” she says evenly, as if this isn’t the worst situation in the world. “You said Tom-Tom could come feed the turtle ducks.”

“I did,” Zuko says faintly, equal part question and agreement. “Uh- yeah.” He stumbles to his feet and grows suddenly flushed as he realizes his tunic still hangs open. He snatches his sash off the ground and fumbles to tie it about his waist, as if Mai hasn’t seen far more compromising parts of him than a narrow flash of his chest. He’s never even been self-conscious about being shirtless before. Agni, this is catastrophic.

Tom-Tom seems to grow tired of their uncomfortable grown-up silence, and bounds across the grass toward the pond. He crouches at the bank, only for his little face to twist in abject agony. “Where’d they go?” he whines.

“You scared them off, dummy,” Mai says fondly from Zuko’s left. He flinches, having missed her approach. She cocks an eyebrow at him.

Tom-Tom turns toward them with moisture welling in his huge eyes. “I didn’t mean to!” Little gasps begin shaking his chest, the tears beading into glassy pools as they prepare to fall. 

Both Mai and Zuko crouch to Tom-Tom’s level, but Zuko moves in first, spurred by the burning discomfort of seeing a child burst into tears in front of him. 

“It’s okay,” he says tightly, resting a hand on Tom-Tom’s arm. “They’re just really- shy?” He glances at Mai to see if this was a good consolation. She gives him a small smirk, then scoots up next to him to take the bag of feed from Tom-Tom’s trembling hand.

“They’re not going to come back if they think everyone is sad out here.” Her knuckle runs beneath one of Tom-Tom’s eyes, then the other, wiping away most of the tears and allowing a few to arc down his flushed cheeks. “Come here.” Then she pulls him into a hug, holding his trembling shoulders directing a subdued smile and an eye-roll over his shoulder at Zuko.

After a few moments, Tom-Tom pulls away, wiping the backs of his hands sloppily over his face. “Okay,” he hiccups. “How do we get ‘em to come back?”

Zuko lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He knows this one. “It’s easy if you can be patient. Do you know how to meditate?”

The blank look on Tom-Tom’s face is answer enough, but Mai adds, “He’s seven.”

Zuko huffs. “I was meditating by seven.”

“And it did so much for your disposition.” 

He cuts a glare at Mai, only to find her small smile lingering. “ _Anyway_ ,” he says, looking pointedly back at Tom-Tom, “we just have to sit still and be quiet for a while. Can you do that?”

Tom-Tom nods adamantly. “Yes, Uncle!”

They settle down by the pond’s edge, Mai on one side of Tom-Tom and Zuko on the other, three sets of legs crossed, six eyes closed. 

“Am I doing it right?” Tom-Tom asks after about ten seconds.

“No,” says Mai.

“It’s like the quiet game,” Zuko says over her. “Do you know that one?”

“Oh, yeah!” There’s a rustle, and Zuko cracks his eye to see Tom-Tom turning toward him excitedly. “Aunt Mura loves that game!”

Mai snorts behind him.

“Then I bet you’re really good at it,” Zuko says. Tom-Tom nods aggressively. 

“He’s okay,” Mai says, her eyes still shut. “I bet he couldn’t beat me and you, though.”

Affronted, Tom-Tom whips his head back around to her. “I could!” he cries.

Mai’s face stays steady. “Hmm. You’re not doing great so far.”

With a gasp, Tom-Tom crosses his arms and screws his eyes shut, scrunching up his mouth. Zuko glances up and finds Mai looking back at him. _Nice one_ , she mouths. He smiles and lets his eyes close.

The quiet is… easy. With his eyes shut, it would be so simple to forget the people next to him, but Zuko doesn’t. Their breathing settles into him, ubiquitous as the rustle of the maple leaves above them, or the scent of the spring grass that swells with each breeze. He might… actually... like this. For the first time he can remember—perhaps the first time ever—he sits near Mai and doesn’t worry about whether he should be taking her hand, or if he’s kept her entertained, if he’s done enough or doing it right. He just exists near her, basking in the idirect sun and the knowledge that, in this moment, no one in the world expects anything from him.

Splashes radiate from the other side of the pond. Tom-Tom gasps. When he peeks, Zuko sees the boy with his eyes slammed shut, forehead wrinkled in concentration, whole body practically vibrating. Mai watches, too, as the mama turtle duck leads her ducklings in a few circles, then cautiously toward the bank. When her blunt little bill noses at Tom-Tom’s knee, the kid looks like he might explode.

Mai hands him the feed bag and says softly, “You win this time.”

The turtle ducks delight in the embarrassment of bird seed that Tom-Tom showers on them. The mama dips upside-down into the water, and the ducklings follow her lead, their tiny feet flailing. 

“They’re so _cute_ ,” Tom-Tom squeaks, obviously straining to keep his volume low. A few ducklings still quack in alarm. “Mai, can we take one home? It could live in the bathtub!”

Mai chuckles. “As amusing as that sounds, this is their home. They need to stay here with their mom.”

“They could move! Like we did, away from Mom and Dad?” He stands up on his knees to look Mai in the eye, clasping his hands together. “Please? Please, please, please?”

The assurance so at home on Mai’s face fades. Zuko knows that look.

He leans in and touches Tom-Tom’s shoulder, gently turning the boy to look at him. “The thing is,” he says softly, “their whole family is here. How would you feel if I decided you were cute, and took you away from Mai and your aunt, and you had to live in _my_ bathtub?”

Tom-Tom’s face twists in consideration. “Bad,” he decides after a moment. “Pruny.” 

Zuko finds himself laughing. “Yeah. Cause- bathtubs aren’t a good home for little kids, right?”

“I am _not_ a little kid,” Tom-Tom interjects, crossing his arms. Some feed spills from the bag as he does this, and the turtle ducklings crowd up to investigate.

Smiling, Zuko puts his hands up in acquiescence. “Sorry. A bathtub isn’t a good home for a young man.” He glances at the little balls of shell and fluff peeping around the bank. “It’s not a good home for turtle-ducks, either.”

Bouncing on his knees, Tom-Tom tilts his head back and whines, apparently in the throes of internal debate. Then he drops back to the grass and sighs, “Uuuuuugh. Okay.” His dramatics send a ruffle through the turtle-ducks, who begin to quack in agitation. 

Zuko can’t help but chuckle. “You can still come see them whenever you want.” His eyes flick up to Mai. “You’re welcome- anytime.”

Mai mouths, _Thank you_.

They stay there for the rest of Zuko’s break, feeding the turtle-ducks and talking and letting the afternoon settle around them when there isn’t anything to say. 

Finally, regretfully, Zuko pushes to his feet. Tom-Tom looks up, his eyes instantly big and beseeching.

“Uncle Zuko, don’t go!” He jumps up, startling the ducklings back into the water. “We’re having so much fun!”

“It can’t be fun all the time,” Mai says, brushing out her robes as she stands. “You know Zuko has a lot of important work to do. And you, Mister,” she ruffles Tom-Tom’s hair, “agreed that you would clean your room after this.”

“Noooooooo…” Tom-Tom lets himself fall backwards into the grass, his lament trailing off. He slaps a hand to his heart and then, in a seven-year-old’s most grisly approximation of death, sticks his tongue out and lets his head fall to the side.

Zuko raises his brow. “Uh, should we…?”

Mai waves it off. “Give him a minute.” She glances up at him. “If you have somewhere you need to be…”

“Oh.” He really does. “No. I have a few minutes.” He rocks on his heels. Finally he gathers enough oxygen to say what he wants to. “Mai, are... you okay? That seemed, uh. Rough.”

“That stuff about Mom and Dad?” She sighs, like she’s over it, though she doesn’t look at him as she speaks. “I’m fine. You have to get used to some hard conversations when your parents go to prison for plotting to overthrow your boyfriend.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Zuko says, because he can’t ever say the right thing in these situations, can he?

Mai, to her credit, laughs. “True.” She sobers, and one of her eyes pinches. “Do you want me to talk to Tom-Tom about calling you ‘uncle’? It was fine, I guess, when he was five, and we were actually together, but...”

“No, it’s alright. It’s-” Truthfully, it is kind of uncomfortable now, but Zuko thinks another change might actually kill him. “It’s- cute,” he finishes lamely. “Not everything has to change. Actually, I don’t mind- if you wanted to, I mean, you’re welcome here as much as you want.” Mai opens her mouth to speak, but Zuko stumbles on. “I mean, as in the actual palace. With me. Our standard date time is open in the dining hall. It wouldn’t be a date, but-”

“I get it.” Mai puts a hand on his arm, a point of warmth sure enough to melt around. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

Eventually Tom-Tom rises from the dead, pretending it has nothing to do with Mai loudly informing Zuko that their Aunt is making homemade fire flakes, and it’s too bad she’ll have to eat all of them herself. Zuko waves as they go, and watches the empty archway long after their footsteps fade. He fumbles with his royal accoutrements for longer than usual before he’s ready to be Fire Lord again.

—

Three days later, Mai arrives for the midday meal.

Roasted duck, chili-fried tomato carrots, and fragrant rice grace the table. Suzuk has brought a plum wine that he spent the previous week’s meal talking up, and Zuko is just about to take his first sip when the tall double doors at the end of the hall open.

Mai stops just short of the doorway. An attendant flanks her, looking at the back of her head with a bold amount of contempt. 

“Mai.” Zuko puts down his glass. “You came.”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“No, you-” Zuko jerks to his feet. His knee clips the table, jarring his wineglass toward the edge of the table. Suzuk catches it, then looks up at him with an incredulity that employs an impressive number of forehead wrinkles.

“-you’re always welcome,” Zuko finishes weakly. He clears his throat, and the next words come a little louder. “Thank you, Shen.” The attendant accepts the dismissal with a bow, and leaves with one last glare at Mai. Spirits, he needs to make sure the staff isn’t doing that to important dignitaries.

To his right, Suzuk is already getting up.

“Uh- Suzuk, you can stay-”

“Oh, I have far too much work to do in the kitchen, My Lord, but thank you,” Suzuk says graciously, taking his full wine glass with him. Zuko wants to ask him what work he has to do that he needs the drink for, but then Mai arrives at his side, making him jump.

“Did I interrupt something?”

“No, we’ve just been, uh. Hanging out. Because-” _because I have literally no friends_ “-we realized we both like, uh. Roast duck.”

“Right.” Mai takes Suzuk’s vacated seat, to Zuko’s right at the head of the table. “I know you’ve been talking about throwing that roast duck festival for a while.”

“Yeah.” Zuko sits as well. Trying to figure out where to look, he glances at Mai’s place setting and realizes Suzuk took her cup. “Oh, um, here.” He sets his own glass by her place. “I didn’t drink out of it.”

She looks at the glass, then at him. “You’re not going to have any?” Her tone is baiting.

“I’m good with this.” He picks up the bottle by the neck and takes a swig. “Good wine. It’s got plum, and- earth. Notes.”

Mai takes a sip from her own glass. “Yeah,” she says, deadpan, “I’m getting a lot of earth notes.”

Zuko nods and knocks back another gulp of wine.

“Are you serious?”

Zuko lowers the bottle to see Mai giving him a disapproving look, the edge taken off by fondness. “What?”

“Are you really getting day-drunk to hang out with me? You invited me here.”

Reluctantly, Zuko sets down the bottle. “I’m not drunk,” he says, although he realizes that was definitely where he was heading. Spirits, he still has meetings today.

Mai takes the bottle and sets it on her far side. “Can you be a normal person, now?”

“I’ve never never been a normal person in my life.” Zuko starts to pile rice onto his plate. He slides the tomato carrots towards Mai; she smiles at him.

They eat in nearly comfortable silence. Zuko’s knee bounces text to the table, but he finds himself a bit eased by Mai’s presence. He’s just remembering why he suggested this in the first place when Mai says, 

“You remember the first time you invited me to a private dinner here, and you sat me all the way over there?” She points to the far end of the table, which is a good six meters away. “You shouted at me the whole time.”

“I felt like I had to! You were- you know, all the way over there!” Mai laughs at him, and he has that familiar prickly feeling of his defenses being ground down, giving his heart room to swell. “At least I didn’t abandon you to dance with a handsy ninety-year-old at a political function for retirees.”

Mai reclines on one hand and rests the other on her knee, smirking. “Zuko, I would have loved to save you from Mrs. Ykomu, but I told you, my feet hurt. And she wasn’t handsy, she was blind as a flutter bat.”

“I’ve never had a flutter bat try to grab my ass!”

“What about the Avatar’s pet?”

“Momo is a winged lemur, and that was once!”

Mai covers her mouth, giggling now. “Oh yeah, Aang had that- that-”

“Light pointer,” Zuko says, fighting a smile for the sake of his dignity. “It was this stupid tube with mirrors inside it- I think Sokka made it for him? -and Momo went crazy for it. I swear to Agni, the chairman wanted that lemur arrested and tried for knocking down the fried bun tower.”

Their laughter carries to the ceiling, and suddenly the room doesn’t feel so cavernous.

Eventually their reminiscence eases into casual conversation. That years-old familiarity passes between them, but it’s simpler, now, unburdened by the pressures of romance. Zuko could happily spend a dozen meals like this, and he doesn’t even worry about whether he’s supposed to invite her to hang around the palace so she can sleep over later. After this, he will go about his day, she will go about hers, and they’ll still be happy to see each other next week. Really, he could stand to see her sooner.

“Oh, Mai,” he says when they’re clearing the dishes, “no pressure, obviously, but I was- wondering if you could help me with a project I have?”

Mai glances up from the plates she’s stacking. “Project?”

“Yeah, it’s- it’s official, but it’s also kind of personal? I have to do it on my own time, but I don’t really have a lot of that, so.”

“Hmm. Sounds very official.”

“Very.”

“And urgent?”

“Top-priority.”

Standing straight, Mai smiles at him over her (frankly impressive) stack of dishes. “Well, I can’t turn down a top-priority request from the Fire Lord.”

Zuko feels his smile go stupid. 

They say their goodbyes with a simple hug, plans made to meet just after dusk later in the week. Zuko leaves the dining hall more excited to see Mai again than he’s been in- well, maybe ever.

Who knew he’d have to break up with Mai to realize he really, actually likes her?

—

“I can see how this was urgent,” Mai drones.

They stand in a dusty office at the back of the royal archive, surrounded by boxes and a single high table with even more boxes shoved underneath it.

Zuko huffs at her and lights another candle with his finger, as if that will make the room less dull. “It’s not, but if I have to hear Chairman Sajeen give another hour-long statement on the importance of returning my ancestor’s portraits to the royal gallery, I’m going to burn the whole thing down.”

Mai levels him a sideways smirk. “That’s not an incentive for me to help you.”

As much as he knows a bit of arson would probably take the edge off of- well, everything, Zuko has a more actionable plan. “Okay.” He hefts a box onto the table and does his best to shovel off the thick layer of dust on top. “So, I started this project a long time ago, but there was never time to review all the applicants.”

Mai opens the box and raises an eyebrow at the canvases and parchment filling it to the brim. “Applicants?”

“Yeah, see?” On top is a bundle of flyers, and Zuko undoes the twine around them and hands one to Mai. “We sent these to artists all over the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes. I just felt like- we’ve spent too much time focused on our own ways here. I want people to be reminded that we’re part of something larger when they come to the palace. These are the submissions people sent in, and when we choose the best ones, we’ll bring the artists out to paint them full-scale, directly on the gallery walls.”

Mai snorts. “Your grandfather would be spinning in his grave.”

“That’s the goal.” 

“It’s actually a really good idea.”

Zuko turns on her. “Why do you sound surprised?”

“Why, indeed,” Mai smirks at him as she begins to lift the first piece out of the open box. “You know, art is pretentious, but this is…” Zuko watches her search for an adjective that won’t betray how much she clearly likes the painting. She doesn’t seem to find anything. He steps around her to see what the painting is, and his breath catches.

On finely woven canvas stretched around a wooden frame, thickly pigmented paint flows in bold, almost disorienting strokes to form a vivid image of a marketplace in Ba Sing Se’s lower ring. It depicts merchant’s carts shoved to the edges of the street, leaving room for the throng of people, dozens and dozens of them, laughing and dancing and throwing their arms around each other, the motion depicted so fluidly that the figures almost shift. The sky isn't visible for the angle, but its light reflects in little flashes of brilliant red, in jugs of water, in puddles on the ground, in a mirror just visible in one of the shop-fronts. It’s clearly the day of Sozin’s Comet, a moment of candid celebration so alive and achingly human that it must have happened that day, in the settling dust of a hundred years of violence.

Zuko grasps one side of the frame with reverence, and the two of them hold it together and stare.

“There’s a label,” Mai says after a moment. She lifts a small tag affixed to the back of the canvas and reads it. “Artist Ton Mayoh. The painting’s called-” she breaks off with a small chuckle. “ _Finally, There Is No War In Ba Sing Se_. And there’s a dedication. ‘For my brother, who lost his life to illness in a refugee camp.’”

They stand in silence for a moment longer. Finally, Zuko takes the canvas and places it on the table. “So,” he says, finding his voice a little choked. He blinks rapidly, hoping Mai hasn’t noticed his misty eyes. “This’ll be the ‘yes’ pile.”

Not all the submissions are so intense, or, for that matter, so good. They move through the first box fairly quickly, establishing piles for “yes,” “no,” and “no, but we’re setting it aside because it’s so bad that it’s funny.” Mostly, paintings of Aang go into this last pile, as people who have clearly never met him really seem to enjoy depicting him as ruggedly muscular, and in one case, weilding a sword made out of fire. 

Mai remains largely quiet as they work, which isn’t unusual, but Zuko knows her by now. He can name the heaviness that curves her upper back, number her sighs and understand each one. When he can’t help it any longer, he lays a hand on her shoulder. She tenses and straightens up, but doesn’t look at him.

“You okay?” he murmurs.

She jerks like she plans to shake his hand off, but ultimately lets his touch remain. “Just reminiscing,” she mutters.

“About Ba Sing Se?”

A sharp, humorless chuckle bites out of her. “I didn’t even care when we were there. When we took the city.” She looks up at Zuko. “How could I not care?”

Zuko hesitates, but her eyes disarm him, they always do, so he wraps his arms around her and holds her close. For a moment, her arms just hang. Then he feels her hands at his back, sliding around until her elbows hook around his waist, holding him tight. His shoulders ease, and his eyes close, and he manages to unclench his jaw for the first time in a while. He doesn’t want it to end.

But it does. Mai pulls away first, avoiding his eyes. And he thanks Agni for that, because habit makes him lean down, makes him tilt his head slightly, as if they’re going to kiss. But they’re not. They aren’t a couple anymore. He straightens out and turns around immediately so that she won’t see whatever his rapidly warming face is doing. It’s- he doesn’t even want to kiss her. He’s fine not kissing her. It’s just what they do. He spent so long telling himself _A boyfriend is supposed to kiss his girlfriend_ , that at some point he apparently trained himself like a dancing tiger monkey. He committed love to muscle memory.

No wonder she broke up with him.

“Sorry,” Mai says.

He turns, finding her back to him. He clears his throat. “No, don’t be. It’s fine.” 

“It’s not, but thank you.”

They finish off the first box without saying much. Mai helps him lift the second one onto the table, and only laughs at him a little when he opens it and an escaping moth startles a yelp out of him. Luckily the artwork seems untouched by their insect friend, and they get down to work. About halfway through the box, the general style shifts from bold blocks of browns and greens, to cool, swirling blues.

“Does the Northern Water Tribe really look like this?”

Zuko looks up to see the scroll Mai holds open, a traditional landscape with the towers of Agna Quel’a rising against a pink skyline. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s even bigger in person.”

“Wow.” Mai considers it a moment. “When did you go?”

“Oh, uh. When I was hunting Aang. I almost got him,” he adds, Agni knows why.

Mai snorts. “You guys reminisce about that a lot?”

“Only when they want to embarrass me. Katara’s kinda touchy about it.”

“Didn’t you save her life?”

“Yeah, we’re- we’re cool, I think she just has trouble laughing about all the times I tried to, uh. Trap her fiance like an elephant rat.”

Mai makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Some people can’t get over things.”

Zuko smiles. He sorts a few more paintings, then stops again and looks at Mai. “How did we never talk about this when we were dating?”

“Who knows.” She doesn’t look up from the canvas in her hands. “We were just going through the motions for a lot of it.”

“I guess so.”

A few minutes later, when Zuko has settled quite comfortably in self-deprecating thoughts about how he wasn’t a good boyfriend, Mai opens a scroll and says, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” 

Zuko immediately puts down what he’s doing and moves to her side. A laugh busts out of him.

The parchment boasts an ink drawing so sloppy that it takes him a moment to figure out what he’s looking at. It’s him, with very spiky hair and a frown so big it doesn’t fit on his face, riding a long shape he can only hope is supposed to be a dragon. The inscription at the bottom reads, _THIS IS JUST A MOCK-UP AT 1/1000 SCALE, VERY LARGE WALL WILL BE REQUIRED_ , and Zuko reads it in Sokka’s voice before he even sees the signature.

Mai sighs, long and heavy. “Didn’t you tell me that this man is about to be one of the most important diplomats in the world?”

Zuko smiles so wide that it strains his scar. “Yeah.”

“Agni save us.” Mai puts the drawing in the joke pile. 

Later, when she isn’t looking, Zuko slips it into his robes to keep.

Hearing from Sokka is a rare pleasure. He’s the only member of Team Avatar that Zuko hasn’t seen in person since the war ended. They exchange letters, of course, but mostly business, mostly formality. Sometimes they have a major event to discuss—for instance, when Aang proposed to Katara far too young and she said no, then when he proposed again two years later and she said yes—but rarely do they strike up casual conversation. Sokka tries, sometimes, by adorning his “how are you''s with little doodles of Momo, or of one of their friends, or Zuko himself. Zuko thinks it’s Sokka’s way of trying to clarify when he’s asking about Zuko out of genuine curiosity, not just politeness, but Zuko never has anything to report that isn’t business, so he’s never been able to communicate that he appreciates the gesture.

When Zuko reaches his chambers late that night, he opens the chest at the foot of his bed and adds the mural submission to the carefully-kept stack of illustrated letters that Sokka has sent him. He finds himself thumbing through them and smiling at the slight but noticeable improvement Sokka has made these last five years. It occurs to him that he must take time out of his busy schedule to practice, and the thought makes him feel light.

Chest closed, memories tucked away, Zuko steps up to consult the circular calendar hanging on his wall. Using a piece of charcoal, he crosses out today and smiles. 

Five more days.

—

The night before Sokka is due to arrive, Zuko brings a bottle of wine to the archives to share with Mai. He’s feeling magnanimous, already imagining how he’s going to brew some of Uncle’s signature tea for a nice dinner with Mai and Sokka, how they’re all going to laugh and how good it’s going to feel to have friends, plural.

Having Mai around the palace this past week has been a spirit-send. He can relax near her, smile without provocation, start breathing again when she notices he’s stopped and touches his shoulder to remind him.

“I missed you,” he tells her without thinking, staring at a particularly ugly painting of Omashu. His heart picks up as the words settle in his ears. It makes him feel- something? 

Mai snorts softly. “When we weren’t hanging out? It was, like, two weeks.”

“Felt like forever,” Zuko murmurs. It’s the kind of stuff they used to say to each other when they were kids, still figuring out romance. It makes him a little dizzy. Still holding the painting in one hand, he reaches for his glass and downs the rest of his wine. 

Is this what it feels like to rekindle a spark? Did he just need to face the fear of a life without companionship to point him back to true north? Should he tell her he wants to get back together? Isn’t that what people do, when they fit so well with someone, when they crave their attention, when losing them would feel like losing a limb?

“Thought-provoking?”

Zuko glances up, confused. It takes him a moment to realize he must have been staring holes into the painting still in his hands. He clears his throat. “No, it- sucks. I was just thinking that I’m glad you’re around again.” 

Mai’s eyes skip across him for a moment, considering. “Me, too.” She gives him a small smile. She separates a stack of paintings from the box they’re working through and sets them on the table in front of her. Instead of beginning to sort, however, she turns toward Zuko. “Actually, can I talk to you? About why we broke up?”

Tension shoots through every muscle Zuko has. He swallows against his closing throat. 

“Yeah. Sure.” He sets down the painting and turns to face Mai fully. “It was because we couldn't see ourselves getting married, right?” Would being married to Mai really be so bad? It would sure as hell be better than marrying anyone else.

“That was part of it. But there’s a bigger reason.” Mai’s eye-contact is complete, unflinching. “I want to tell you, if you’ll listen.”

“Sure.”

Mai takes a long, deep breath. Steeling herself. 

“I’m gay.”

Zuko stills. He stares. He waits for her to say more. She doesn’t. She just looks at him. 

“What?” he says finally. Oh, his voice sounds rough.

“I’m gay,” Mai repeats, exact same intonation. “I’m attracted to women. Exclusively.”

“But-“ Zuko’s thoughts feel fluttery and disorganized, and they crumble like dragonflies when he tries to pin them down. “We were together.”

“We broke up.”

He shakes his head, frustration bubbling in his stomach. “I meant- we slept together!”

She shrugs. “It never felt right to me.” 

That slaps him. Wounds his pride, maybe. He wants to tell her that she never exactly thrilled him, either, but he chokes on the words as Mai’s face pulls uncharacteristically open, her eyes searching and the line of her mouth weak.

“Zuko,” she says with force, like talking to a disobedient child. “Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”

“I don’t know if I do!” he snaps, which isn’t the truth, but it’s all he can articulate. 

That hint of vulnerability smooths out of Mai’s features. She looks like a portrait, neutral and eternal. “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it.”

He doesn’t know either. “It’s clear. I just can’t...” he breaks off, too staggered to finish the thought.

Fury, cold as steel, snaps across the black of Mai’s eyes. “I thought you would understand.”

“I’m trying to!” 

“Are you!?” 

Eyes pinching shut, Zuko grinds the heels of his hands into his face. He wants to ask her what she’s thinking. Why she would do this to him. Why she would leave him, spinning and directionless, for— this.

“Are you sure?” he asks instead.

“Am I sure?”

“That you’re-” his throat closes around the word.

“Gay?” Mai sighs. “Yeah, Zuko, I’m sure.”

He lets his clenched hands spread to cover his whole face. The darkness offers no answers, but it calms him slightly. Allowing his hand to drop, he tries to look Mai in the eye. It’s hard, suddenly. “How long?”

Her brow raises slightly. “How long have I known?”

“Yeah.”

She closes her eyes a moment, sighs, opens them. “I don’t know. Maybe a long time.”

“ _Maybe?_ ”

“Yes, _maybe_. It was- hard, figuring out exactly how I felt.”

Zuko stomps forward and throws his hands up. “Then _how_ do you know?” The candles around the room swell.

“Ugh!” Mai growls, and Zuko knows she’s just matching his hostility with her own, but he can’t help the fiery surge her anger sends through him.

“It’s a reasonable question!” he says in a very unreasonable tone.

“I love her, okay?!”

That throws him. He jerks away, shakes his head, tries to run the conversation back.

“I’m in love with a woman,” Mai says, and she says it so emphatically but with such exhaustion, looking at the floor.

The furor wisps off of him like steam. He wants to do something. He wants to hold her. He stays where he is. 

“But how… how do you know that what you feel for her is- that kind of love?”

She scoffs, but it’s soft, tired. When she looks up at him, her eyes harbor more feeling than he can take. “How do _you_ know when you’re in love?”

Zuko has only ever been in love with Mai. Yet, he doesn’t even remember how that felt, because apparently at some point over the years he’d fallen out of it without even noticing. _I don’t know,_ is the answer to her question. He can’t say it.

Mai’s face hardens again, and she sighs loudly after a moment. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Zuko.”

He’s thinking that this is bad. He’s thinking of what his father would have done to her if she had this revelation as a child, and voiced it as they played in the courtyards. He’s thinking that he needs to lie down.

“It’s just-“ he feels sweat bead down his jaw, despite the draft cutting through the room. A terrible energy swells through him, threatening to congeal into rage in the pit of his stomach. Instead, he closes his eyes, draws a deep breath that shakes on the way in, and runs through one of the mantras Uncle taught him. Finally, he opens his eyes again.

“It’s illegal, Mai.” 

She jerks backwards. “Seriously?” When he doesn’t respond, she huffs angrily. “Wow, too bad no one in this room can change that.”

“I can’t,” he says instinctively. 

Mai’s eyebrows lower slightly, sharply; the furrow that folds between them frightens Zuko more than any bender’s flame.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“Mai-”

“Should I expect my charges soon? Am I headed to Boiling Rock?”

“What?” Zuko’s voice peaks like a kid’s. “Of- of course not!” The passion has shaken out of him now, leaving him cold and nauseous. 

“Just an exception for me, then?” Mai takes a step toward him, almost shouting now. “Pardoned for my crimes because I have an in with the Fire Lord?”

“No!” He wants to tell her she hasn’t committed any crimes, but he realizes he doesn’t know that for sure. Spirits. “It’s wrong, Mai,” he says, quiet. The candles burn low, a few wicks snuffed in their own wax.

“ _Wrong?_ ” For a moment, Zuko believes Mai might pull a knife on him. “I can’t believe this.” She turns with a growl under her breath, and has torn open the door before she spins on him, upper lip ticked back over one canine.

“I expected better from you. You’re the Fire Lord, Zuko, and if you’re going to be a better one than your father, you need to think long and hard about what happens next.” Her teeth clench, making a snarl of her mouth. “I _trusted_ you.” 

A knife would have hurt less.

She slams the door behind her. Zuko’s insides seize at the sound. He barely makes it to the waste bin before he heaves up the wine.

—

It storms the next morning, because of course it does.

Three hours before dawn, Zuko wakes in a cold sweat, whether from the crack of thunder or the arrest of the muscles beneath his lightning scar, he’s too sucker-punched to know. He lies in bed and clutches at his abdomen, gasping through the pain. The wild mess of his hair falls into his eyes and sticks to the saliva at the corner of his mouth. He tastes ozone.

Lightning always agitates his injury. The physician never could determine if it was physical or psychological, but his uncle commented on how “interesting” it was that the pain happened so near the stomach chakra, what a “coincidence” that this was the Fire Chakra, and “how fascinating, Nephew, that it is the chakra which is blocked by shame, a feeling you spent much of your youth struggling with.”

Zuko lays his arm over his eyes and groans in the darkness.

When the sheets of rain reduce to patters and Zuko’s muscles have eased a bit, he sits up on the side of the bed. He flinches at the cold tile against his bare feet. Folding his hands in his lap, he breathes through a few rounds of centering exercises, then pushes his inner fire down his chilled legs and to his soles. He reaches back for a blanket to wrap himself, then turns to look at the empty side of the bed.

For a moment, he can see Mai sleeping there, her face unguarded, eyelashes stark against her cheeks, fists curled loosely by her sternum. The warmth of her breath rolls, phantom, across the silk. What he wouldn’t give to reach for her now, to lose his hands on her skin, forget who he is in the familiarity of being touched, being held. 

_It never felt right_. 

The sex wasn’t great. Zuko knows that. But he truly thought it worked for them. It took them years to build up to it, and that was fine, because once they did, they knew each other by instinct, by reflex, just like every other part of their relationship. Zuko thought- spirits, he thought it had been comfortable, at least. Had he done something? Hurt her, upset her, fucked her up so badly that she never wanted to be with a man again? That she would do- this?

“This can’t be my fault,” he snarls, a plume of heat across his bare shoulder and chest as he whips his head away from the barren bed. He rakes his hair out of his face, smooth sheafs of black falling past his shoulders. _It’s getting as long as mine_ , Mai said, last time she ran her hands through it. Is anyone ever going to touch him like that again? 

“Don’t let this be my fault,” he whispers.

Thunder rolls, indifferent.

Eventually he gathers the blanket around his shoulders and stands from the bed. A thought follows him across the room, a distant memory of pretending his childhood blanket was a mantle and cape. Playing Fire Lord, they’d called it. He shakes his head against it. 

He kneels in front of his desk, the blanket pooling around him, and ignites a candle with his fingertip. Light flutters across the series of portraits he keeps. Each frame immortalizes a long-gone moment: an official portrait of he and Aang clasping hands after his coronation; a quick sketch by a biographer, capturing a candid scene of the whole gang lounging in the royal gardens; a stylized painting Uncle gave him for his eighteenth birthday, featuring the two of them frowning at a pai-sho game; a romantic composition of him and Mai seated on the edge of a fountain, heads tucked inward toward each other as if laughing at something.

This last one, he carefully tilts face-down onto the desk. He can’t look at Mai right now. His eyes draw across all the tiny faces smiling back at him, and some of that nausea returns. He can’t look at any of them, right now.

He tips his head toward the ceiling and sighs forcefully, ignoring the sparks that flutter out of his mouth. 

“Get ahold of yourself,” he says. When a few seconds pass and he hasn’t, in fact, gotten ahold of himself, he drops his gaze back to the table. He finds himself looking at Aang.

Over the last few years, Zuko has gotten into the habit of asking himself what Aang would do when he’s stumped.

He asks it a lot.

Of course, if it were easy to think like Aang, he probably wouldn’t have a lot of the problems he has in the first place. It’s more of a thought exercise, trying to open his mind to consider the perspective and tendencies of someone who is fundamentally his opposite. Usually, at the very least, it helps him take a step back from the issue at hand.

On this, he gets nothing.

He picks up the portrait from the coronation and squints at Aang, as if the dyed silk in the frame is going to tell him anything other than what his friend looked like on that distant evening. 

“You’re the Avatar. Just tell me what to do!” He glares at the portrait for a moment. It remains unmoved. Sighing, he puts it back gently.

He could always just ask.

They don’t exchange many letters. Aang visits more than the others; by virtue of having both a flying bison and a lot of international obligations, he always finds a reason to stop by the palace every few months or so, even if just for an afternoon. He never fails to greet Zuko with a shit-eating “Flameo, Sifu Hotman!” and always reminds him to laugh at himself. He hasn’t changed. Well, in some ways. In others, he’s nearly a different person: a tall, gangly figure growing into wiry muscle and a deepening voice. Even so, Zuko knows like he knows the arc of the sun that even on the day he looks at his friend and finds an old man with deep smile lines and faded tattoos, he will still see the gentle face of that child who gazed at him all those years ago in the forest and said, “Do you think we could have been friends?”

It’s taken him a long time to believe he deserves a friend like Aang. At this moment, he doubts it. Still, as he sits at his desk and stares at the tacky ink in its well, he can’t imagine writing to anyone else.

“Fuck,” he murmurs, and rolls out a piece of parchment. 

_Dear Aang,_

_This may seem strange, but there’s something I want to ask you about._

—

In the late morning, the sky clears. By mid-afternoon, the storm exists only as humidity curling off the stone roadways, and a few pockets of mud where the grass grows thin.

Salt hangs heavy in the harbor air, a smell that takes Zuko instantly back to those months at sea with Uncle. He wrinkles his nose against it, trying to stay moored to the present. Between the storm and the arduous process of drafting his letter to Aang, he didn’t get a wink more sleep before his duties began for the day. When he arrived for his first appointment, Yuna took one look at his face and had an attendant fetch him a cup of chi-boosting tea. Then another, an hour later. And a third, thirty minutes after that.

“Are my eyelids twitching?” he whispers to Yuna. She glances up from her itinerary and squints at him.

“No,” she says. Then, “A little. It’s not noticeable.” 

He sighs and presses his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. “Great. Thanks.”

“Happy to help.”

Along with Yuna, gathered around him are a few of his advisors, the current Southern Water Tribe Ambassador (who Zuko believes to be approximately two-hundred years old), and a small detachment of palace guards. An occasional murmur of conversation runs through them, but mostly, they watch the bay as one, squinting at each distant peaking wave in hopes that it becomes the tip of the first Water Tribe sail breaking the horizon.

Zuko’s heart pounds, something he’s tempted to blame on the tea. Sweat already dampens his upper back under his mantle and cape. Just before leaving the palace, the royal tailor, Musun, pulled him aside and insisted that it was customary for the Fire Lord to wear full formal attire when receiving a guest as important as an ambassador. The idea made Zuko’s skin prickly; given that his history with Sokka was one of sleeping side-by-side in the same sets of dirty clothes night after night, he couldn’t see himself donning lavish regalia for this reunion. After a spirited argument of which he’s a bit ashamed cumulated in him shouting, they compromised. He wears a semi-formal sleeveless tunic that falls to his midthigh, and pants tucked into practical boots, but over it all, a gold-trimmed mantle with a brilliant red cape sweeping down around him. _Just one cape_ , he had to insist when Musun tried to put him in the three-layered one. He did sigh and allow the tailor to put a few golden bands on his upper arms, “To tie those terrible arm guards into the outfit.”

Truly, he wishes no one else was involved in this. If he could just meet Sokka like old times, two friends unencumbered by duty or expectations or political meddling... but they can’t. That’s such a stupid thought. Sokka is only coming _because_ of politics. Angi, he needs to start thinking like a world leader instead of a moody teenager.

“Oh! My Lord- look!” Yuna pats at his arm, jerking Zuko back to the stench of salt and fish and the tremor of anticipation. Yuna points out at the bay. There, just visible, a smear of dark blue rises against the brilliant sky, and finally, fucking _finally_ , Sokka is here.

It takes what could very well be years for the ship to maneuver in and the gangplank to extend. The vessel is modest, and once three Water Tribe sailors have disembarked, Zuko can’t imagine that there could be anyone left on board other than Sokka. He finds himself stepping forward, energy coursing through him. His eyelids are definitely twitching at this point. 

A glimpse of a brown ponytail appears over the side of the ship, then Sokka stands to his full height, lifting a crate with him. He throws a quick glance at the dock, shifts the weight of the crate, then whips his head back down to Zuko, eyes wide.

A smile unfolds across Sokka’s face, so huge and exuberant that it pulls at something in Zuko’s chest until it hurts.

“Zuko!” Sokka cries, high and expressive. He immediately sets down the crate and comes jogging down the gangplank.

Gone is the slim silhouette of Sokka’s youth. He’s still lean, but he fills out his light, blue warm-weather clothes with the well-defined muscle of a man who makes a point of training regularly. And he _is_ a man. Zuko doesn’t know why he expected to see a sixteen-year-old stumbling off the boat, maybe dicking around with his boomerang or talking excitedly over a map, but the reality staggers him slightly.

His face has filled out, dark stubble converging down the broad shape of his jaw to a thicker patch of hair on his chin. Zuko’s eyes draw below that to his throat, and he doesn’t know quite why, except maybe to notice that he has a new necklace with teardrops of blue jade inlaid on the middle three sheaves of whale-walrus ivory.

Sokka skids to a stop in front of Zuko, and adopts a serious expression as he bows his head over a very formal sign of the flame. Then he stands, and breaks back into that grin. Something warm washes through Zuko, and intensifies immediately with the very real heat of strong arms thrown around him.

“Oh, man, I missed you.” The depth of Sokka’s voice shoots through Zuko’s limbs, wholly unexpected, but- right, because of course, they’re both going to sound different. When they finally pull apart, Sokka holds him by the shoulders. His bright eyes skip around Zuko’s face, smile easier, now. “You look great.”

“It’s good to see you, Sokka.” Zuko’s voice comes thin. He clears his throat. “Or, uh, Ambassador Sokka?”

Sokka pulls his hands back and dusts an imaginary speck off his own shoulder. “That’s Mr. Ambassador Sokka, actually.” He makes what Zuko assumes is supposed to be a fancy expression- which for some reason includes pulling his mouth low on his face and his eyebrows as high as they can go- but breaks all too quickly when Zuko laughs. 

“Fuck,” Zuko sighs, “It’s good to see you.” 

Sokka actually giggles. “Whoa, power has changed you! You didn’t curse last time we hung out.”

Zuko’s face goes warm. Probably the humidity. “We were constantly around kids last time we hung out.”

“We _were_ kids last time we hung out.”

“Yeah, you’re, uh-” he reaches out and grasps Sokka’s bicep, which- okay, that’s probably awkward. He pulls his hand back. “We’ve all grown up.”

For a moment, Zuko has to assume that Sokka’s unreadable expression hides the inevitable realization that Zuko is, in fact, very stilted and still has no idea how to act around friends. But then Sokka moves on, already gesturing wildly as he talks. “Yeah, shit, can you believe Aang is taller than me? Well- us, because I’m clearly taller than you.”

“Uh, barely.”

Sokka strokes at the patch of beard on his chin, squinting. “Looks like a good amount to me.”

Zuko bites back a smile. “I should have protested this appointment when I had the chance.”

“Too late!” Sokka throws his arm around Zuko’s shoulders and tugs him into his side. “You’re stuck with me now. I’m going to make you miserable.”

“I’m already miserable,” Zuko says, and can’t hold back his smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (tw for an unpleasant attempt to come out in the 4th scene, and some homophobic thought processes in the 5th scene)
> 
> thank you guys for your interest and support!


	3. Eating At Me

The Fire Nation Palace changes the moment Sokka crosses the threshold. Maybe it’s the crash of blue into a red world, or the distinct tenor of his voice carrying between the marble columns, or perhaps just the excitement of his gestures upending the restraint often shown in these halls. 

Whatever it is, it heaps embers onto Zuko’s heart.

“-and then Katara walked right up and bent a better one out of ice. He was _so_ mad.” Sokka laughs at his own story, a pitchy, squawking cackle. It’s a stupid noise. 

Zuko feels lighter when he hears it.

“Sounds like she knows how to handle things down there,” he says, looking ahead instead of at Sokka’s smile. 

“Oh, for sure. She’s a natural. Can’t say I wasn’t a little jealous when Dad and the council picked her as Chief, but she’s just so good at it. Everyone loves her.”

Zuko holds his hands folded carefully behind his back, acutely aware of the need to look royal despite the tender feeling that rolls through him. He knows he should be thinking about what Katara’s leadership might mean for the world going forward, but he’s just happy for her. 

“I’m glad they sent you here,” he says, and finally glances at Sokka.

Sokka’s smile is surprisingly soft. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Clearing his throat, Zuko looks ahead again. “Have you seen any of the others lately?”

Sokka’s smile grows, and he launches into an account of accompanying Toph into the Si Wong Desert to parley with the Hami tribe. They spent a few months living a nomadic life there, and were able to strike up a transportation deal with the sand-sailors in order to expedite the shipment of supplies from Ba Sing Se to the impoverished cities in the southern Earth Kingdom. Sokka handled most of the official arrangements, but it was Toph who secured the trust of the Hami. Apparently her hatred of the desert had evolved into a furious determination to “defeat sand,” and she managed to alter her metal bending technique to help navigate the shifting, disjointed earth that made up the desert. As she came to understand the sand, she grew to respect it, and the Hami responded favorably to that, as well as the sheer ingenuity of her bending. Sokka relays all of this with stars in his eyes.

Zuko wonders if Sokka has ever lit up like that when speaking of him, or if he speaks of him at all.

“Oh, yeah,” Sokka says, interrupting his own stream-of-consciousness chatter, “I didn’t ask. How’s Mai doing?”

That single syllable hits Zuko like a slice of bent air, knocking the breath out of him and all coherent thought with it. His feet actually falter for a moment, and Sokka walks a few steps on before turning to look at him. 

For a few blissful minutes, Zuko forgot entirely about last night. Now it looms on him like it’s still happening, and his throat burns where the alcohol and stomach acid regressed through it.

When Zuko doesn’t respond, Sokka’s brow pulls in with concern. He steps forward, reaching out and opening his mouth to speak.

“My Lord,” a voice wheezes behind Zuko. He jumps and turns. Behind him stands the current Southern Water Tribe Ambassador, Vuloda, looking up at him with eyes icy blue beneath cataracts, couched in bags and wrinkles. “I’m sure you two have a great deal of catching up to do,” she creaks, “but I had hoped to begin training Sokka now that I’ve had my supper.”

It’s the middle of the afternoon. Zuko laughs despite himself, which is probably very rude, but it’s all he can do against the whiplash.

“Oh, of course, Ambassador Vuloda.” Sokka steps up to her side, then puts his fist beneath his palm and bows. “We can talk later, Zuko.”

Zuko bows back, dazed, automatic. “Uh- yeah. See you.” He’s still watching Sokka go when one of the royal notaries jogs up, balancing a mountain of scrolls.

“My Lord, there you are,” she pants. “These need signatures!”

—

Two and a half hours later, Zuko leaves his study in a huff, shaking out his aching hand. The notary always says that he should grip the brush loosely and move from the shoulder instead of the wrist to avoid cramping, but then his script comes out sloppy and she tells him he should write more clearly to avoid any forgery concerns. He sniped at her about it today, for which he would feel more guilty if he hadn’t caught her muttering, “At least _I_ don’t have the hand strength of an aardvark sloth.” It was deeply unprofessional of her, but he deserved it, so he called it even and pretended not to hear.

He stops before the great windows overlooking the road to the palace, sighing as he takes in the great swaths of red and orange and brown. He chooses a cart to watch while he takes a few mindful breaths, centering himself as the shape shrinks on the curve of the road. A sliver of sun still hangs over Caldera City, promising maybe fifteen more minutes of workday.

With a twinge of guilt, Zuko retreats to his chambers. He only has to duck behind a few corners and columns to avoid the staff and dignitaries asking after him with last-minute business.

He washes his face thoroughly, changes clothes, takes his hair partially down, then changes clothes again. Once night settles undeniably over the palace, he hails a servant in the hall to find out which quarters Sokka is assigned to. Three minutes later, Zuko knocks on Sokka’s door.

There is no answer. The pleasant effervescence in Zuko’s stomach sours. He knocks again, and tries a hesitant, “Sokka?” Still, nothing.

“He’s just not in,” he tells himself, as if that isn’t the most logical explanation, as if it isn’t ridiculous that he’s wondering what he may have done to make Sokka avoid him, as if he isn’t already convinced that he fucked this up somehow without noticing. He shakes his head violently. “Argh!”

Again, he makes himself breathe—surely, breathing is not supposed to be this deliberate—and heads for Ambassador Vuloda’s office.

Sure enough, because Zuko is nothing if not an overthinker, Sokka is there. Tension eased a bit, Zuko leans in the open doorway without announcing himself. Ambassador Vuloda hunches at her desk, holding up one of many open scrolls, and Sokka bends at the waist to read over her shoulder. Zuko finds himself smiling at Sokka’s Extremely Serious face, at the way he reaches up to stroke earnestly at his chin in the exact same way he does it sarcastically. Sokka asks thoughtful questions, clearly committed to absorbing every dry, rambling thing his elder has to say. 

Eventually, Sokka’s eyes skip up to Zuko. His face brightens, and he winks over Ambassador Vuloda’s shoulder. Zuko raises his brow in a _you good?_ gesture. Sokka smirks at this, and mimes dying with his tongue sticking out, looking at that moment much more like Tom-Tom than a diplomat in training.

Spirits, Zuko missed him. 

He mouths, “Tomorrow?” and Sokka flashes a covert thumbs-up.

“And here, you’ll see the legislative groundwork for Proposal Fifteen,” Ambassador Vuloda says, picking up a new scroll. 

Sokka’s attention snaps back to her. “Oh, I see what you meant about addendums.”

“I knew you would understand.” She reaches up and pinches Sokka’s cheek with an aggression of affection mastered only by the elderly. Zuko slaps a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh.

That night, he settles into bed, still grinning at the memory of Sokka’s incensed expression.

—

Zuko is calmer, these days. Not _calm_ , necessarily, but calmer. If a diplomat slights him during a meeting, he can usually wait until afterwards to shout, and he’s learned to do it into a pillow. 

Some things, however, he just can’t fucking handle.

“We will _not_ be returning to conscription practices!” His voice snaps back off the meeting hall windows, and the room brightens as the sconces swell with agitated fire.

The smattering of advisors, assistants and military personnel around the table all look at him with wide, blank stares that should give him pause. The only face he cares about meets his eyes from the opposite head of the table, and that face makes him _furious_.

“Fire Lord Zuko,” says General Jih, calm but just as booming, “while your hesitancy is to be expected, you cannot dismiss our country’s safety out of personal fear.”

“ _Fear?!_ ” Every flame in the room surges. “General, how do you think it would affect our country’s safety if every man and woman over eighteen had to _fear_ that they could be ripped from their lives and forced to fight in some new war at a moment’s notice!?”

“The mass troop resignation endorsed by the throne is not sustainable. Our military has weakened beyond the acceptable. I know _you_ didn’t fight in the royal forces, Fire Lord Zuko, but-”

Zuko doesn’t hear anything after that. Rage shoots hot and blinding up from his gut. His feet shift, reflexive, into a bending stance. The words _Agni Kai_ thrum so close to his lips that he thinks he may have already said them, when the hand lays on his shoulder.

His head jerks right, and he finds the gently grimacing face of Hongi, his most trusted advisor. The room, he realizes as the roaring in his ears dampens, is quiet. Advisor Hongi leans toward him, and stands on her tiptoes to tilt her head close to his ear.

“My Lord,” she murmurs, “let me handle this pompous ass.” 

Her authority and the wink she gives him as she steps back both bring Zuko closer to the moment, where he realizes smoke curls from between his fingers where they splay against the tabletop. A pool of water drips off the table’s edge, leading to his cup toppled onto the floor. He slowly lifts his hands, realizing he must have slammed them down.

Vacantly, he gives Advisor Hongi a nod, and she begins to address the General. He finds himself dropping backwards into his chair, unable to follow the ensuing debate. Quiet footfalls tap across the marble floor, then Yuna stands at his side. She holds her itinerary up over her face as she leans down to address him at a whisper.

“Please don’t take offense to this, My Lord, but perhaps you should retire for the day.”

“I’m fine,” he snaps quietly. She flinches. “Sorry. I- thank you, for your concern.”

The corner of her mouth pinches inward as she seems to chew on her inner cheek. “What I meant, actually,” she says haltingly, “is that I believe it might be better for the proceedings if you were to, uh, recuse yourself.”

He hasn’t exactly been looking forward to spending the rest of the day in military council, but he bristles at the suggestion. Still, he finds his gaze drifting back to the table, and winces at the handprints scorched into the ipé.

“Did I... Did I challenge the General to an Agni Kai?”

Yuna pales. “Um. No, My Lord. You didn’t get around to that.”

He sighs and rubs his face. “Okay. You’re right. Thank you, Yuna.”

With a blunt, manicured hand at his elbow, Yuna urges Zuko to his feet. Advisor Hongi casts him an assured little nod, while General Jih levels a scowling smirk across the table. For about four seconds, an impulse flickers in Zuko to storm up to Jih and throw not only a punch, but all pretense of decorum out the window. Then his eyes catch the servant kneeling to wipe the water he knocked over, and shame chokes that spark.

“Don’t worry, My Lord,” Yuna says as she closes the meeting hall door after them. “Advisor Hongi can handle herself.”

Zuko grimaces. “I don’t feel good about leaving her in there with Jih.”

“Um, I think he’s soundly outnumbered. While you were, um...”

“Having a tantrum,” Zuko supplies quietly.

“...experiencing very understandable anger,” Yuna says instead, ever tactful, “I was taking the temperature of the room. I’m no statistician, but I’d say support for his proposal was about a fourth in favor and two-thirds against.”

Zuko squints. “That... doesn’t work out.”

“Well, I’m not a mind-reader. There were some poker faces.” Yuna rolls her eyes and turns her focus to her itinerary, retrieving the charcoal rod from behind her ear to write something. “You can trust the people you have in that room, is what I’m saying.”

He makes himself believe her, because the alternative is more than he can deal with, today.

At Yuna’s suggestion—honestly, he owes her some kind of gift basket—Zuko retires to the royal training compound to work out his frustration. He sets up a few flame-retardant practice dummies and throws himself into the familiar motions of bending. He hasn’t firebent in a while, not in earnest, so the literal and metaphorical flexing of those muscles relieves some tension. It doesn’t hurt that he imagines General Jih’s face on the dummies, either.

Despite the mild relief the exercise brings him, he maintains a low, simmering annoyance; he’s rusty. His technique is sloppy. Even basic moves drag with the effort of drawing the fire out of himself. Though he can feel that he’s reaching for his anger to fuel the flame, he can’t stop it, at the mercy of the chokehold his emotions have on his body. Fuck, hasn’t he grown past this? Why can’t he just _change_ already?

The shout builds in his chest for several seconds before he releases it. Finally it bursts through, a spark-flecked roar as he throws his entire weight behind a vicious punch. A fireball scorches from his fist, and sends the dummies clattering to the floor.

Then the smoke clears, and there stands Sokka, shocked still.

Zuko’s eyes widen. He straightens up like a caught child. 

Finally, Sokka takes a step into the room. With an awkward chuckle, he nods at the dummies on the ground. “Traitors to the crown?”

All Zuko can do is stare. Sokka is not wearing his tunic. Instead, it hangs, twisted and damp, around his shoulders. Apparently unaccustomed to the Fire Nation heat, he drips with sweat, glistening down the column of his neck and collecting in rivulets where the planes of his torso converge into defined shadow. His trousers sit low, and, when he turns slightly to look down at the dummies, the sash around his hips clings just below the dimples bracketing the base of his spine. Stretching across his upper back is a tattoo, something in midnight blue ink, with the moon and the ocean and the beautiful traditional curls of the Southern Water Tribe’s style. It vanishes as he turns back to Zuko.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah.” Zuko looks down, avoiding Sokka’s eyes. “I’m- fine. Just got out of a shitty meeting.”

“I feel ya there.” Sokka saunters past Zuko and tosses his tunic onto a bench. Zuko looks up and finds himself staring at the tattoo, how it bows with Sokka’s shoulder blades and dips against his spine. “It’s like, this could have been covered in a scroll!”

“Yeah,” Zuko says again. 

Sokka turns back to him, hands on his hips. “You sure you’re okay? I could help you blow off some steam. Not to brag,” he stretches his arms, fracturing the light across his slick muscles, “but I’m a great training partner.”

Numbly, Zuko nods. “Uh- yeah, sure. Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Sokka says, and slaps him on the shoulder.

Zuko fetches his dual dao from the weapons vault. Sokka already has his sword on him, presumably for whatever training he just finished. Even after all this time, he still handles his space sword with an amusing mixture of reverence and glee. He was obviously despondent about losing it on the day of Sozin’s Comet, but he brushed it off, pulling Suki close and declaring that they had managed to keep what was really important. Then on a quiet morning two weeks after the war ended, Aang and Toph returned from an unannounced errand with huge grins and the sword displayed between them. With both of them searching, it had only taken a few hours to find it. Sokka was so excited that he jumped out of bed to stage a one-sided sword fight with an imaginary enemy, and instantly reinjured his broken leg. Katara thanked Aang and Toph for their generosity, then threatened to throw the sword in the ocean. 

Apparently, it didn’t come to that. As Sokka squares up on the far side of the sparring ring, it’s clear from his comfort with the weapon that it hasn’t left his side in the last five years. Zuko, conversely, had to rub dust off of his blades before bringing them out of the storage. Now, he scrubs his thumb along the hilt in his hand, and scowls at the texture of grime against his skin, a spot he must have missed.

Sokka’s ready stance deflates slightly. “Hey, are you okay? If you’re too tired-”

“No,” Zuko says, raising his blades to the ready, “let’s go.”

Sokka smirks, and then they rush each other. 

The first few minutes feel familiar, easy. Sokka’s technique is just how Zuko remembers it, dependent on quick, pointed strikes and linear strokes. It’s always reminded him of a fire bender, strong base and direct attacks. Zuko’s own style is more circular, arcing and flowing and depending on balance and counterbalance- like a water bender’s. He’s always liked that, taken a secret, silly joy in the role reversal, the yin and yang of it.

Quickly, though, he forgets his musings on swordcraft. He loses ground, barely managing to parry as his forearms begin to sting from the strain of gripping his dao. Sokka’s quick, clever, all his years as a tactician and hunter evident in his unexpected footwork and fake-out strikes. Obsidian arcs toward Zuko, and he brings his swords instinctively together over his center, only to find both blades caught by Sokka’s. In the instant that he realizes he’s lost, his eyes flick up, and Sokka is so close to him, leaning in, eyes wild and bright, flushed and grinning. 

Then Sokka twists his blade. Both dao go flying, and Zuko falls on his ass.

“Oh, yeah!” Sokka whoops and pumps a fist in the air. “Hey, good match.” He reaches out for Zuko, but his face falls when their eyes meet.

Zuko doesn’t know what his own face is doing. He tries to reign it in as Sokka’s hand claps into his. Once pulled to his feet, he retrieves his swords, and elbows the sweat off his forehead.

“Alright,” he says, “again.”

An odd little quirk passes over Sokka’s brow, but he sinks into a ready stance without replying.

Sokka wins again, and again, and again, faster each time. Zuko hits the ground for the second time today on his final loss, this time going down hard on his hip. 

“Shit,” he snarls. He hangs his head. His arms tremble to support him. 

Sokka kneels at his side. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Zuko snaps. Sokka scowls at his tone and stands back up. Sighing, Zuko shoves himself back to his feet, wincing as his hip smarts. It’ll definitely bruise. “Sorry,” he says, looking at Sokka’s shoulder instead of his face. “I’ve… had a long day.”

“It’s alright. I, uh…” Sokka sheaths his sword, then scratches at the shorn back of his head. “I heard it’s been a hard couple of weeks, actually.”

Oh, spirits fuck it. Zuko closes his eyes for a moment and thinks about laying down on the floor again. “Who told you?”

“Uh…” Sokka’s hand migrates down to his neck, and he looks away. “Like, four different people?”

Zuko nods, because of course. Of course.

“Look, I get that breakups can be hard to talk about, but if you need to-”

“No,” Zuko says, and then laughs, a sound that is humorless and unsettling even to his own ears. “No, I _really_ do not want to talk about it.”

Sokka lifts his hands in clear surrender. “That’s cool. Look, do you wanna get out of here?”

Confusion punctures Zuko’s growing discontent. “What?”

“Like, out of the palace. I’ve barely seen any of the city. You can show me around, get some fresh air. I could do a bit of shopping.” He wiggles his fingers, as if he can already feel the superfluous purchases at his fingertips.

Easier than he would have guessed, Zuko smiles. “That… that does sound fun. I’m just- I don’t know if I’m up for it.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s fine, we-”

“If you still wanted to do something,” Zuko cuts in, suddenly very desperate to get that disappointed look off of Sokka’s face, “there’s this incredible silk screen artisan I could give you directions to. Her work is amazing, and she takes students, if you wanted to work on your, uh, art.”

Sokka’s eyebrows snap downward, so sudden and exaggerated that Zuko can’t tell whether the scowl is serious or sarcastic. “And what,” Sokka says, voice high and arms crossing, “is wrong with my art?”

“Nothing!” Zuko shakes his head and his hands, like he can wipe the air clean. “No, I just meant—” and okay, Sokka is smirking a bit, now, “—obviously drawing is something you enjoy, and you have to have hobbies in a job like this.”

“Hobbies _are_ good for personal enrichment,” Sokka muses, stroking at his stupid little beard (he looks nice in it, adventerous and dignified, but for some reason Zuko still looks at it and thinks it’s stupid). “What about you?”

Zuko blinks. “What?”

“You got any hobbies?”

“Oh. I, uh. I meditate?”

Pressing his chin out, Sokka gives a thoughtful nod. “Okay. So, we will be finding you some real hobbies.”

Zuko laughs earnestly, which he didn’t think he had in him. It fizzles quickly into a sigh. “I don’t really have much time for that stuff. My free time is mostly paperwork and sleep.”

“Ah.” Sokka nods, looking a bit subdued. His eyes skip across Zuko, pinging between points at his hands and his knees and his face and his chest until Zuko feels turned thoroughly inside out, while he still can’t identify the emotion in Sokka’s eyes. “Well,” Sokka says, finally, “if you’ve got paperwork to take care of, I don’t want to keep you from that.” Zuko thinks something about that sounds a little sad, but Sokka smiles at him, so maybe not.

“Actually, my plans fell through for the rest of the day. So, you don’t- I mean, we can hang out if you want. Around the palace,” he amends, because Sokka was beginning to look a bit too excited.

“Alright. Rain check on the personal enrichment.” With a sweet ring of metal, Sokka draws his sword and angles it at Zuko. “Now, would you like to get back to the part where I kick your entire royal ass?”

A smile cuts, fierce, across Zuko’s lips. “Oh, try me.”

(Sokka beats him again. This time, he doesn’t mind.)

—

The prospects for Sokka’s first World Cooperation summit couldn’t look worse.

Only one of the two delegates from Agna Quel’a has bothered to show up, but of course the bickering representatives from Ba Sing Se, Omashu, and the Hu Xin Provinces all managed to make it, and Advisor Hongi, who Zuko usually leans on in these meetings, is absent due to a schedule conflict.

Worse yet, Zuko knows for a fact that Chief Arnook has sent Ambassador Ohini with the task of proposing the construction of a canal through the center of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation colony territories. The looming project is general knowledge among the delegates, but as the meeting hall begins to fill, the dread of actually discussing it is palpable.

When Sokka shows up looking confident and optimistic, he’s the only one. He waves at Zuko from his seat across the room. Zuko grimaces, but waves back.

Ten minutes. That’s how long Zuko manages to hold off the inevitable. Then, Ambassador Ohini stands at her seat and slaps a neat stack of parchment on the table in front of her.

“I have a proposal to put before the honorable delegates,” she says.

It goes downhill from there.

“The Northern Water Tribe can’t seriously believe,” a Fire official says at a volume that is louder than polite, “that the region would support a disruption like this.”

A burly Earth delegate nearly topples her chair as she shoots to her feet. “You hardly speak for the region!” 

“Fire Nation citizens outnumber the Earth Kingdom population in that area four-to-one, or did you forget why we’re having this meeting in the Fire Nation?”

“It really doesn’t matter,” Ambassador Ohini cuts in, voice frigid, “because, as I have said, the plans for the canal do not disrupt any-”

“Any major city centers, _we know_ ,” snaps the Hu Xin representative. “Just because you don’t consider something a major city center doesn’t mean that there aren’t communities and agriculture in the area! We must protect our smaller communities!”

“Smaller communities!” The glass of water in front of Ambassador Ohini begins to frost, emitting the low crackle of oncoming ice. “If you want to pretend like you care about the plight of smaller communities, how about you acknowledge that one of the major goals of this project is to expedite food and aid to our sister tribe, a community that nearly fell prey to complete annihilation before the war ended.”

Sokka cries, “Hold on!” and his pitchy voice draws painful attention to his role as most junior Ambassador. “Don’t act like the Southern Water Tribe is destitute! We’ve managed for almost a hundred years on our own, thank you very much!”

The burly Earth delegate punches the table. “Exactly! Sounds to me like the Northern Tribe is just looking for an excuse to get a foothold in Earth Kingdom territory-”

“Foothold!?” Ambassador Ohini slams her palms down, further abuse of the table. Her cup wobbles between her hands, frozen completely solid. “What exactly are you implying?!”

“I think you know exactly what! The Northern Tribe is trying to extend their reach-”

“The Northern Water Tribe,” Ambassador Ohini shouts, “is trying to maintain some semblance of control over the distribution of its own goods without worrying about Earth Kingdom disarray, the- the bandits and- ruffians! If your land-based caravans didn’t go missing so often-”

“ _Wait!_ ” Sokka yells at the top of his lungs. “Wait! Wait a minute! 

Silence falls so suddenly and completely that Zuko can hear the whisper of brush on parchment as the scribe furiously takes notes in the corner of the room.

Looking a bit surprised that he has the floor, Sokka clears his throat, then says, “Why the hell aren’t we using motorized blimps for this?”

Zuko frowns. A few of the delegates tear their eyes from Sokka to glance at him. No one answers.

“Zuko,” Sokka says, then he gets a nasty look from a Fire official, and begins again. “ _Fire Lord_ Zuko, is there a reason that the Fire Nation hasn’t offered blimps to help the Northern Water Tribe, so that they can transport goods more quickly to the Southern Tribe, and more safely to the Southern and Eastern Earth Kingdom?”

It’s been a long time since Sokka looked at him with such intensity. Zuko sits up a bit straighter under the scrutiny. “The blimps were destroyed,” he says simply, clearly.

“Uh- yeah, of course. You know,” Sokka glances around to make sure everyone is getting this, “I actually helped take them down.” He chuckles uncomfortably, and clears his throat. “But surely a new fleet is complete by now.”

Zuko flattens his mouth, and clenches his jaw against the tension in the room. No one speaks.

Slowly, Sokka’s eyes widen, and his eyebrows draw together. “There’s not a new fleet?”

“As part of our commitment to keeping peace,” Zuko says, even as he can, “the Fire Nation no longer manufactures war vehicles. How do you not know this?”

Sokka scoffs out an offended little noise, then begins to rifle through the scrolls in front of him. “I knew about it! But- war vehicles are, like, tanks, not-” He stops, apparently having found what he was looking for. His eyes dart across the scroll, then he scowls at it. “Okay, well.” He tosses the scroll aside and stands up straight, crossing his arms. “This is a serious misuse of resources.”

Argument erupts all over the room. The Fire Nation officials look like they might pass out. Ambassador Ohini seems on the edge of a bending match with the burly Earth Kingdom delegate. One of Zuko’s Advisors stands up and starts to pace angrily behind him. The scribe isn’t even writing anymore, just staring, open-mouthed, at the chaos.

“Stop it!” Zuko roars, shooting to his feet. The room goes still again, this time underpinned by a current of fear that makes Zuko slightly sick. He closes his eyes, tries to center himself. When he opens them, he finds himself looking directly at Sokka. It’s a determined face. A face he trusts. He groans lowly in his throat, then makes himself sit down. Around the room, the delegates follow suit. Sokka is the last standing, but he nods gently, and takes his seat as well.

“Ambassador Sokka,” Zuko says, just loud enough to carry through the room, “I understand your position on this issue. However, the Fire Nation cannot betray the trust of the world by going back on our word and making killing machines as soon as the war ends.”

Sokka’s face softens. His pupils dart, apparently searching for something in Zuko’s face. Zuko wonders if he finds it.

“Fire Lord,” Sokka says, “this would not be going back on your word as soon as the war ends. First of all, it’s been five years. Second, the Fire Nation wouldn’t be making killing machines. You would be making huge transport vehicles capable of moving hundreds of people or thousands of crates of food over both land and water, without the need for bending.”

Throat tightening, Zuko makes himself swallow. Anger thrums just beneath his lungs, making his insides feel too large, like one of those fucking war balloons, but he hears Sokka. He does. “Alright. What if the plans get into the wrong hands?” 

Sokka breathes a low _hmm_ , and puts a hand on his hip. Then, he turns to the side of the table where the Earth Kingdom ambassadors are clustered. “Do you guys plan on using the Fire Nation’s blimp plans for warlike purposes?”

This gets them up in arms, of course, shouts of “No!” chorusing over each other, but Zuko calms them with a wave of his hand. 

Sokka turns to Ambassador Ohini. “You?”

Her crossed arms and cocked hip embody bemusement. “It’s not on the agenda,” she says flatly.

“And we’re not interested in starting anything, so.” Sokka gestures to the room at large. “There you go!”

“Ambassador Sokka,” Zuko says, clenching his fists, “I _obviously_ wasn’t accusing our allies of intending to revive the war. The concern is with fringe groups. Anti-alliance and anti-peace groups are in no short supply-“

“How big are those groups?” Sokka asks.

“Excuse me?”

“How big? The biggest one you can think of.”

Zuko’s flounders, and looks between his small attaché of advisors and the regional delegates sitting at the table.

Finally, one of the delegates says, “The Rukeyo Coalition in North Hiduri have about eighty members.”

“Eighty!” Sokka says. “So, assuming these Rukeyo Coalition people, currently the biggest enemy group out there, did get ahold of the plans and all the parts needed, and did somehow successfully build a war blimp— and also made their own bombs, because our plans clearly won’t include those—there would be one enemy airship out there, because it takes about fifty people to operate one.” He crosses his arms, looking smug. “Well,” he says, faltering slightly, “I guess they could manage one and a half. But the half wouldn’t fly.”

Everyone stares. After a moment, Sokka shrinks slightly under the attention. He clears his throat. “Anyway.” He turns and looks Zuko right in the eyes. “The benefits outweigh the risks.”

Zuko sighs. He puts a hand to his temple and thinks a moment, then says, “Alright. I’ll take the use of blimps into consideration and bring it before the Fire Council. We’ll return to it at our next summit.”

Sokka’s smile is euphoric.

The meeting winds down a few hours later with much less drama than it started with. Zuko finds himself stealing looks at Sokka, and every time, blue eyes meet his, unflinching.

As the delegates clear the hall, Zuko stands by the doorway and bids them each farewell, employing their various local greetings and bows. The last goodbye comes with a tight hand on his arm; he finds himself smiling as he grips Sokka’s cloth-wrapped forearm, returning the Southern Water Tribe hand clasp.

“Thank you, Ambassador Sokka. I think we-” He takes a breath. “I needed your perspective.”

Sokka’s earlier grin has settled into something softer, maybe satisfied. “Happy to provide,” he says, and doesn’t release Zuko’s arm. “This is going to be an important step forward.”

Something thick and heavy settles in Zuko’s throat, but it isn’t bad. He squeezes Sokka’s arm lightly. “It is. Thank you for helping us take it.”

Eventually, they let go. It feels too soon.

—

Technically, the reception for the trade committee isn’t a business event. The sun set long enough ago that the stars glitter visibly, even through the heavy veil of firelight. Attempting to even “talk shop” over the hors d'oeuvres is frowned upon after dark; evening festivities are supposed to be strictly social.

But nothing can ever be that easy.

Even at his best, Zuko knows he _sucks_ at socializing. There isn’t a more tactful way to put it. He can rarely think of anything interesting to say, he gives sweaty handshakes, and his sense of humor skews a few degrees sideways of everyone else’s, so that his jokes fall flat and his laughter is a learned response that doesn’t exactly sound natural. 

All of this would be bad enough if these functions were actually as they seemed. But every smile, every bow, is laced with double meaning. And as the Fire Lord, he has to keep track of it all. Ministers that give him side-eye as they walk off, businessmen that speak a little too fondly of the “old days” — they’re sand sharks, every last one of them, circling for a drop of blood in the dunes.

And that’s just the threats. Every moment of Zuko’s life so far has prepared him for facing the enemy. He can anticipate their movements, learn their style of attack, and predict what they might do next, all reflexive as breathing. But it is also the Fire Lord’s prerogative to forge alliances. He’s supposed to be _friendly_. All the faces and names, the mundane and benign agendas, he has to keep those in his head, too. A dozen enemies, he can handle, but one chatty well-wisher is enough to trip his fight-or-flight.

At least the food is good.

Since the reception is for the global trade commission, the kitchen prepared a spread of international dishes, and waiters drift here and there offering samples of foreign delicacies and exotic cocktails. One waiter, in particular, catches Zuko’s eye: a tall man with black hair pulled into a blunt ponytail, strong-shouldered and a bit heavy in the middle, with an easy manner and a gentle smile. He balances a platter with small cups of sea prune stew. Zuko hates sea prunes, ocean kumquats, and every other offensive fruit that tries to grow in the brine. He finds himself raising his hand to signal to the waiter. 

The waiter doesn’t see him. Instead, Zuko’s beckoning gesture lands with a squat, balding man in an ill-fitted tunic. Before he can figure out if there’s a polite way to communicate that he was waving at someone else, the balding man approaches.

“Fire Lord Zuko!” He bows with an absurd flourish. “Here I was, fearing you had forgotten our pleasant chat at Li’s Solstice Gala.”

“Oh,” Zuko says. He does not remember their pleasant chat at Li’s Solstice Gala, or, for that matter, Li.

“But of course you wouldn’t forget,” the man continues. “I have always said that the best leaders are those who can treat every subject with the personal attention of a close friend. Now,” he claps his hands together. “I simply must update you on my dearest Sho Lu.”

Blindly, Zuko snatches a cocktail off a passing tray. He throws it back without even looking at it. It tastes… green. “I hope she’s doing- well?” he says, and desperately hopes that Sho Lu is a woman.

“Well, it was touch-and-go there for a while.” The man nods, solemn. “The physicians weren’t sure what to do. I even arranged to have a water bending healer come look at her, but no luck.”

“Oh. Um, that’s rough.”

“It was very rough,” the man says, laying the back of his hand across his forehead. “I didn’t know what I was going to do if she- well. As I told you, I was willing to do anything to get her the help she needed. Now, which treatment were we trying when I spoke to you last?” 

After an agonizing moment, Zuko realizes it wasn’t a rhetorical question. “Uh. Acupuncture?”

“Acupuncture!” The man lurches into a fit of booming laughter, turning several heads. “Oh, I did not know you had such a sense of humor, Fire Lord!” 

“Yeah, I know- a lot of jokes.” Zuko hopes his smile doesn’t look as painful as it feels.

“Really, though.” The man mimes flicking a tear away from his eyelid. “I can’t recall.”

Zuko blinks at him. “Um,” he says. He shifts. “Uh-”

“Well, what do we have here?” And through the dull red crowd comes a shock of blue: Sokka, holding a cup of sea prune stew in each hand. He stops at Zuko’s side. “Southern Water Tribe Ambassador Sokka at your service.” He bows, though he holds both cups of stew level as he does. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure, um…?”

“Dokam!” The man returns Sokka’s bow. “It is an honor, Ambassador. You know, I was just telling the Fire Lord about a water bender I met, a healer. Toya, Tana, something like that. Maybe you know her?”

“Oh, yeah, close personal friend,” Sokka says. Dokam smiles, blissfully unaware of Sokka’s viperous sarcasm.

His assailant distracted for the moment, Zuko lets himself breathe out. A slight shake runs through his limbs, and he tightens his fists and his jaw against it. He can’t believe a single, stupid conversation has left him like this. Next to him, Sokka navigates a much more vigorous discussion with what looks like total confidence. He finds himself watching his friend, trying to note his mannerisms, maybe learn something. 

But he can’t focus. His eyes drift down from Sokka’s face, and he notices for the first time how… distinct he looks, tonight. White beads and seafoam blue silk compose a high-collared capelet, which he wears over a sleeveless, gauzy tunic that Zuko doesn’t think he’s seen him in before. A few fine silver bands circle his biceps, giving him a surprisingly delicate look, though he still wears his ubiquitous arm wraps and leather gloves. Zuko doesn’t know whether they’re of a cultural or a combative significance. If the former, he’s glad his friend has a piece of home with him. If the latter, he can’t help but wonder if Sokka keeps them on for the same reason that Zuko still carries Uncle’s knife in his boot.

Zuko’s attention wanders back to the present just in time to register Sokka slamming one of his cups of stew in a single gulp. He sets the empty vessel on a nearby table, then bows with a sign of the flame, made slightly awkward by the remaining cup of stew in his fist. “Well, it was very nice meeting you, Dokam. I hope Sho Lu makes a speedy recovery.”

“Yes,” Zuko says, snapping back into the conversation. “Sorry she couldn’t be here tonight.”

Once again, Dokam loses himself to booming laughter. “Oh! Oh, I’ll have to tell the wife about that one! Absolutely hilarious, Fire Lord.”

As soon as Dokam walks away, Sokka turns to Zuko. “Sho Lu is a two-ton, prize-winning, competitive-racing mongoose lizard,” he says, “and you’ll be very relieved to hear that they diagnosed her illness. She’s expected to make a full recovery once they finish this round of medications and physical therapy.”

Zuko puts his face in his hands. “Spirits help me.”

Sokka nudges him with an elbow. “Hey! No spirits required with Ambassador Sokka around.”

Without lifting his face, Zuko sighs, “Thank you.” Finally, he looks up. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Uh, and leave these sea prunes to be underappreciated by a bunch of spice lovers? No way.” He downs his second cup like the first one, then grimaces slightly. “The texture is all wrong, by the way, but I’ll take what I can get. Also, I figured it’s not a bad idea to schmooze a bit.”

Schmooze. Zuko glances about the room and imagines Sokka schmoozing his way through, laughing, talking, gleaning vital information, leaning in to get the best gossip. He tries to imagine himself doing the same thing, and feels a bit sick. Perhaps it’s the smell of sea prunes.

“Hello, messenger hawk for Fire Lord Zuko.” Sokka waves his hand in front of Zuko’s face. “Hey. You good?”

It takes a moment for Zuko’s eyes to focus fully. “Oh- yeah. It’s just,” he gestures vaguely to the hum of movement and conversation around them, “it’s a lot.”

Sokka smiles, subdued. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking that, myself. C’mon.”

Then Sokka leaves, and Zuko follows him without hesitation.

The pavilion where the party takes place is on a distant, second story wing of the palace, surrounded on its three outer sides by open-air balconies. Sokka leads Zuko out onto one of these, and Zuko loosens immediately, eased by the crisp smell of the evening. They stop by the railing that borders the balcony, and Zuko gazes, silent, over the familiar courtyards and gardens beyond.

“Wow,” Sokka says after a minute, “you really dressed up for this.” He pokes the flat of his finger against the sharp corner of the elaborate mantle on Zuko’s shoulders. “Is this your pointiest one?” 

“I don’t choose my clothes for these events,” Zuko huffs, unable to curb the amusement in his tone.

Sokka clicks his tongue and leans on the railing. “You have to do a lot of these?”

Zuko shrugs, and joins Sokka with his elbows on the red-varnished wood. “A few.” He sighs. “It’s still too many.”

“Yeah, uh… this,” Sokka nods back toward the party, “doesn’t seem like your kind of shindig.”

Zuko smiles slightly at that. “What _is_ my kind of shindig?”

“Hm. Very serious. No fun at all. Party games are only permitted if they involve fire. Sparring is encouraged, but should be to the death. Tea is served. It’s awful.”

“Hey! I can make good tea.”

“You’re making the tea at this? At your ideal party, you’re doing the catering?”

“I did not say this is my ideal party! This is your scenario! And- and maybe I like serving tea to my friends!”

Sokka’s eyes sparkle, or maybe just catch the torchlight. His smile is soft. “Okay. Ideal party, which friends do you invite to serve tea to?”

“You, obviously.” He counts on his fingers. “Aang, Katara, Toph, Suki. Ty Lee, Mai-” It takes him a moment to remember why her name feels stale in his mouth. He’s instantly nauseous, and grips the bannister as he dizzies. Sokka stands up straight with a start.

“Oh,” he says, horribly quiet. “Zuko, are you-?”

“I’m fine.” Zuko pushes up off the bannister and walks a few feet away. If he wanted to leave, he’d have to go back through the party, so instead he crosses his arms, hangs his head, and sighs.

“Do you… want to talk about it?” Sokka rests his hand on Zuko’s shoulder.

“No.”

“Okay.” The weight of Sokka’s hand withdraws. Zuko hears him take a step back and a deep breath. “I know it hurts to talk about, but you have to start working through it sometime. I’m not saying now, but- I’m here, when you’re ready.”

For a long moment, Zuko doesn’t say anything. A breeze picks up, small and cool and cloying, coaxing out the baby hairs he can never pin back and sending them tickling across his forehead. He looks back at Sokka. In the back glow of firelight, shadow dilutes his features, leaving his starkest details in the stubble on the edge of his jaw and the freckled skin at his temple. A few loose hairs catch the wind and roll across his cheek, and one lingers for a second on his eyelashes.

Fuck, Zuko wants to tell him everything.

“It’s not like it’s been... terrible.” He says, finally. It’s like pulling teeth.

Sokka seems to wait for him to say more. When he doesn’t, Sokka bobs his head back and forth as if physically rattling an idea around. “Well... that’s good, right?”

“Yeah. I guess. I just-” Zuko grips his hair and pulls, not caring that it dishevels his top knot nearly to the point of unraveling. “I feel like I wasted both of our time. We’ve been dating since we were sixteen and it just- meant nothing!”

“There’s no law that says dating has to be _for_ something. Sometimes you’re just with someone, and it changes you both, then you split.”

The word “law” sticks in Zuko’s chest, an obstruction to his breathing. He rakes his hands down from his hair to his face, sending treacherous strands spilling down his shoulders. “I just. I thought it was going to be _easy_ with her. Why couldn't it have been easy?”

Sokka snorts. “Uh, relationships have never been easy for anyone, ever.”

Zuko leaves the safety of his hands to squint at him. “What about Aang and Katara?”

Sokka whips out a finger, wagging it like a teacher. “Okay, that is _not_ the standard. First of all, they’ve had their rough patches. And second, as someone who’s spent a ton of time around them, believe me when I say that their good times are pretty much unbearable. They’re extremely oogie. “

Spirits, how does Sokka always make him smile? “You’re still trying to make oogie a thing?”

“Oogie is a thing, and it’ll be a thing until the day I die.” Sokka smirks, then looks out over the gardens. “I’m just saying. You can’t use childhood romance as a- as a metric for which life decisions are best.”

“I guess.”

For a moment, it’s just the wind. Zuko looks up at the stars, then down at his hand next to Sokka’s, each blemished and scarred with their own constellations.

Abruptly, Sokka says, “Toph had a crush on me when we were kids.”

Zuko’s head jerks up. “What?!”

Sokka laughs, obviously having gotten the reaction he wanted. “Oh yeah. Which, you know, considering she’s turned into a huge lesbian-” 

“She’s- gay?”

Sokka gives him a curious look. “Yeah. I mean, she almost buried me alive last time I tried to ask who exactly she’s dating, but she’s not shy about her preferences.” He raises his eyebrows. “I thought you knew. She told me she spent, like, that entire banquet in Omashu trying to get you to wingman for her.”

Zuko feels punched in the chest, actually quite similar to the sensation of Toph’s small but mighty knuckles. “I don’t remember that.”

Sokka shrugs. “It was a couple of years ago. She said-” his eyes widen, and he lets out a loud, squawking laugh. “Oh, shit, you didn’t get it! She told me you were being frog-squirrely about it, but you-” he’s near hysterics now, tears threatening, “-you had no idea what was going on!”

Zuko puts his face in his hands. In that moment, he would rather die than let Sokka see the heat likely turning his whole face the color of his scar. Sokka pats his back forcefully, still laughing.

“Oh, buddy, that’s amazing.”

“I’m bad at identifying lesbians,” Zuko says with defeat through his fingers. It’s a truth he might as well accept at this point.

And now, how can he say nothing? He has to talk about it. Fuck, _fuck_ , he has to _talk_ about it.

Once he feels the blood begin to drain from his cheeks, he faces Sokka. “What’s the- I mean, how-? Um,” spirits, it’s a disaster already, “what does the Water Tribe think? About. Gay. Gay people.”

Sokka stares blankly at him, as well he should. “What… does the Water Tribe think about gay people?”

Zuko nods, out of words for the moment.

“Um,” Sokka says, and fuck, Zuko’s made him uncomfortable. He thinks about pitching himself over the balcony while Sokka seems to consider his answer.

“I never thought about it,” he says after a moment, “but it’s... fine? I guess I can’t really speak for the North, ‘cause they do have some kind of old-fashioned ideas, but- yeah, it’s cool, where I come from. I actually think there may be something between my dad and his friend Bato, but- we don’t have to talk about that.” He sticks out his tongue and winces one eye.

A cold, heavy feeling floods through Zuko’s extremities. “Oh. Do… you think it’s bad? Personally?”

Sokka’s eyes snap wide. “Spirits, of course not! I just meant- it’s my dad’s love life, you know? It’s weird to talk about.” He looks down and away, sighing. “And... realizing that he started moving on from mom a long time ago but isn’t ready to tell me about it, that was kinda hard. But I- of course I want him to be happy. If my dad was going to settle down again, I couldn’t imagine someone better for him than Bato. I mean, they fought a war together. Do you really get to know someone better than that?” A strange little smile takes the corner of his mouth, almost wistful. “It’s not surprising when you think about it.”

Zuko’s heart pounds. 

“Was that… about something? In particular?” Sokka asks, finally looking back at him.

“No! Nothing.” He knows he said it too fast even before Sokka’s skeptical side-eye slides toward him. A moment passes between them, fraught with things unsaid. Zuko looks at his hands, intent to keep it that way.

“Well,” Sokka sighs after a long moment, pushing off the bannister, “we better get back in there.”

Zuko nods, swallows. “Yeah.” 

As they head back toward the lights—were they always so unpleasantly bright?—Zuko finds himself reaching out to touch Sokka’s shoulder. “Hey.”

Sokka turns, eyes intent.

“Uh, thanks. For getting me out of there for a bit.” Zuko summons up a smile, but it feels weak. “If you have to go, that’s fine. But if you’re staying, could you-?”

“I’ve got ya.” Sokka claps a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “I’ll keep the chatty ones at bay. Oh! Here, let me fix this.” He reaches for Zuko’s face, and for a blind moment, Zuko thinks about Sokka’s palm cradling his cheek. Before he has time to process that, he feels Sokka’s fingers work deftly into his hair, trying to re-tie his top knot and secure the crown headpiece, which Zuko realizes may have been sagging to the side. 

“There you go.” Sokka withdraws his hands and dusts them against each other. “Good as new.”

It probably doesn’t look good as new. It probably looks terrible. Still, Zuko says, “Thank you,” and he means it.

—

The next evening, a letter arrives from Aang. Zuko forgoes his dinner and retires early to read it. He sits, cross-legged on his bed, and stares at the unopened scroll on the intricately embroidered blanket, the Water Tribe seal a calming point of contrast against the crimson fabric.

It takes him an hour to finally open it.

_Sifu Zuko,_

_Flameo! You’re right, your question was a little strange! I actually had to ask Katara for clarification. I didn’t realize there was anything noteworthy about same-gender couples, since those relationships were always a part of Air Nomad society. When I was a kid, it was pretty normal in the Fire Nation, too, so I’m guessing the war changed how you guys think about love and sexuality and gender. I’ll try to explain things from my point of view as well as I can._

_To answer your main question: my opinion on gay relationships is that they’re perfectly normal and beautiful! I was in love with a woman in my past life as Avatar Kyoshi. In this life, Katara is my soulmate, so I can't imagine myself with anyone else. But if she was another gender, I know I would love her exactly the same. In fact, if she transitioned today, I would just be happy to see her honoring her most authentic self. For me, love transcends gender._

_Speaking of gender, I noticed in your letter that you only mentioned men and women. I want to mention that those were never the only options in my day. There were a lot of monks who were neither men nor women, and instead had their own personal gender outside of the male-female binary, or no gender at all. I am actually non-binary myself! I go by “he” and “him,” as you know, and you can also refer to me as “they” and “them” if you like. I know I haven’t spoken much about my own gender identity, but it is important to me._

_I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Jie An, a major spirit in the Southern Air Temple tradition. They can appear as a non-binary figure, as well as a man or as a woman. Their name means “pure peace,” referring both to the outer peace of treating others with kindness, and the inner peace of being true to yourself._

_The Air Nomads would usually declare their gender sometime in adolescence, but it could always change as they got older. Some people might go through a permanent change at some point, and for some it was more fluid. My teacher and friend, Monk Gyatso, was many genders throughout his life._

_Given all of this, I hope you can see why labeling relationships as gay or otherwise was a bit pointless in my day. There was really no need to define those loves as different, because they simply weren’t. I do understand that systems have grown more rigid in the past hundred years, and I have to confess that I’m saddened by that, but it makes me glad that most people still seem to honor and accept all kinds of relationships._

_I can’t help but think of a story from the Earth Kingdom, which spoke of an Emperor and his husband. So gentle was their love, that when the husband fell asleep in the Emperor’s arms, the Emperor chose to cut the sleeve of his fine robe, rather than pull it from under his husband’s head and risk waking him. I don’t know why, but I thought you’d like that story._

_It was good to hear from you, Zuko. Please write if you have any more thoughts about this subject, or if you just want to talk. Either way, don’t be a stranger!_

_Your Friend,  
Avatar Aang_

Zuko reads the letter again. And again. Then three more times. He reads it until his eyes swim from exhaustion. Finally, he lays the parchment gently on his bedside table, snuffs his candle, and falls into a fitful sleep.

—

“Afternoon, My Lord. No Mai, today?”

Zuko looks up with a start at Suzuk’s voice. He hadn’t heard anyone enter, and finds the chef standing next to him, giving him a look altogether too close to pity. 

He grits his teeth. “Not today,” he says.

“Hmm.” Suzuk deposits a plate of steamed fish on the table in front of Zuko. Its clouded yellow eye stares up at him. “I take it that the plan to ‘stay friends’ didn’t quite work out.”

The fish’s stupid mouth gapes open. Its body below its head it has been cleaned and filleted, lean muscle splayed around its spine in an elegant bloom. Zuko knows the feeling.

“Yeah, we’re, uh…” his voice nearly scratches out. “No. It didn’t work.”

With a small nod, Suzuk lowers to the cushion next to Zuko. “I’m sorry, My Lord. I did hope it would.” He watches Zuko for a moment, then adds, “She always did seem difficult to get along with.”

Zuko’s head whips up. “What!?”

Suzuk’s eyes go wide and his pupils shrink. “Ah- I just meant-”

“No!” Zuko sits forward, and Suzuk shrinks back, which isn’t what he wants, but he can’t contain the shout rising out of him. “Just stop! Mai did nothing wrong!” As he hears the words, he knows unflinchingly that they are true. His voice grows louder. “I’m the one who fucked it up! I ruined everything! It’s my fault! So, don’t- maybe you mean well, but don’t talk like that about Mai! She deserves better. And I-” the pressure built in his chest flushes through him, a burst of energy so unbearable that he shoots to his feet without thinking. “I have to go.”

Suzuk calls after him, but Zuko doesn’t hear the words. He’s already across the room, throwing the double doors open. The fish sits, uneaten, on the table.

Zuko has no idea where Sokka takes his midday meal. He tries Vuloda’s old office, which is now papered in Sokka’s maps and diagrams, but empty of the man himself. He tries Sokka’s quarters. He tries the social hall. The tables in the central courtyard. The kitchen, itself.

He’s ready to scream in frustration when he catches a flash of blue while storming his way past a random balcony. He doubles back, and there’s Sokka, reclined on a bench with a bowl of seaweed noodles in one hand.

“Sokka!”

“Zuko, hey! What-”

“Mai broke up with me because she’s gay.”

Sokka stares at him. He sets his chopsticks in his bowl, and then the bowl on the bench at his side. “Okay,” he says, “that’s- okay.” He stands from the bench and takes a step toward Zuko. “How are you doing with that?”

“Not well,” Zuko rasps, perhaps his greatest ever understatement.

Sokka’s mouth skews sideways. “Alright. Yeah, I guess that could be a little tense, since that used to be illegal here, right?” 

The thunder of Zuko’s heartbeat is so insistent that he doesn’t think he could speak even if he could find the words. His pulse throbs at the center of his clenched fists. He can’t read Sokka’s face, and the longer Sokka is silent, the more unnatural the moment feels. 

“It was more than a little tense,” he forces himself to say.

Sokka frowns. “And… why was that?”

“It’s still illegal.” 

A furrow shoots between Sokka’s eyebrows. “What?”

Spirits. Zuko swallows, hard. “It’s. Still illegal.”

“What?!” Sokka’s arms shoot out and his face goes wild and his voice pitches up, like a toucan puffin startled by a predator. “Wait, you didn’t- fix that?”

“No.”

“Why?!”

“I didn’t - I didn’t realize.”

“Didn’t realize it was a law?!”

“Didn’t realize it was a bad law.”

Sokka balks at him. His arms fall, apparently too shocked to lift them any longer.

“I know,” Zuko says, and scrubs his face with his hands. He wants to keep scrubbing until his skin falls off and no one can recognize him. “I know. I fucked up.”

“Uh, yeah, you did.”

His hands fall to reveal Sokka, arms crossed, every inch the steadfast warrior who once planted himself between him and the Avatar. 

Fitting, since he feels utterly honorless in this moment.

“It was really weird growing up here,” he says, and Sokka doesn’t want to hear his excuses, he knows that, but he stumbles on. “I was told so many lies, every day, at the same time I was learning how to read and write and bend. It took me so long to figure out what was true and what wasn’t. I—“ he looks up, suddenly desperate for Sokka’s eyes. Sokka’s face has softened, though not completely. That’s fine. It’s more than fine. “I’m going to change it. I’m going to fix everything. I’m so sorry, Sokka.” 

“Hm.” One of Sokka’s crossed arms raises, a knuckle stroking at his chin. “Sounds like I’m not the one you should say sorry to. And,” he lifts the finger, as if indicating an idea, “it sounds like my top legislative priorities just changed.”

Zuko draws a sharp breath. “You’ll help?”

“Of course. I can start getting the documents in order so you can get it onto the agenda for the next Fire Council. You,” he points at Zuko, “need to talk to Mai.”

Zuko swallows around a lump in his throat. “Yeah. I do. I should-” He turns toward the door, only to jerk to a stop with Sokka’s hand on his arm.

“Whoa, where are you going?”

“To- to talk to Mai?”

A smile, slight but certain, crosses Sokka’s lips. Zuko thinks he could cry at the sight of it. “Zuko. Don’t you have, like, five more hours of meetings?”

“I- yeah.”

Sokka releases his arm. “You probably shouldn’t skip those.”

Zuko nods. “Right. Yeah.” He keeps nodding, more deliberate, now, and flexes his hands, bouncing on his heels. “Yeah, I’ll talk to her as soon as the day ends.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sokka.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you, for-” he swallows. “Thank you.”

For a moment, Sokka considers him, another of those unreadable expressions. Finally, the corner of his mouth flicks up, and he pats Zuko’s shoulder with only a bit too much force. 

“Of course.” His hand lingers.

“I- I _am_ sorry.”

“I know.” Sokka lets the hand fall. “But now, the only way is forward.”

“Mm.” Zuko huffs, just an edge of humor escaping him. “I have a lot of experience with that.”

Sokka sighs. “Don’t we all.” And with that, he sits back on the bench and crosses his legs, the conversation apparently ended. He picks up his bowl of noodles, then raises his eyebrows at Zuko. “Hey, have you eaten?”

“I, uh, wasn’t hungry.”

With a skeptical look, Sokka slurps down a bit of his meal. “You’re gonna be hungry later.”

“It’s fine,” Zuko says, and actually sort of means it. “This was more important.”

Sokka schools his face into a haughty, detached expression. “Bold words from someone who’s grumpy even without skipping meals.” But then he breaks, and he smiles, and Zuko knows for sure that he’s doing the right thing.

—

Fire lilies crush around the door to Mura’s house. Petals burst out of the overfull pots hanging on either side of the frame, eleven in total. There used to be twelve, but Tom-Tom shattered one of them a few years ago, a deliberate experiment that his five-year-old brain had apparently deemed essential to conduct. Zuko helped him clean it up, handling the shards of porcelain with gardening gloves while Tom-Tom held the burlap sack open for their disposal.

 _“This is why we need to be mindful of our actions,”_ Mai told him, holding the red remains of a flower in her hands, its petals twisted like a creature flayed open. _“Once you’ve done something, you can’t undo it.”_

 _“I’ll tell Aunt Mura I’m sorry,”_ Tom-Tom said, but Mai just shook her head.

_“That won’t fix the flowers.”_

Zuko has never liked fire lilies. They make his eyes water. He stands and stares at them now, as the pollen itches across his cornea and tickles high up in his sinuses. 

Finally, he makes himself knock.

After a moment, Mura answers the door. Her eyes snap wide, then she dips her head very low, her aged knees trembling slightly as she drops into a kneel. She does this every time they meet, but it still makes Zuko squirm. She’s old-fashioned. He’s told her she doesn’t need to be, but she has her convictions. She was raised when things were different. 

He can hardly blame her for that.

He bows back, and she rises when he does, wiping her hands on the apron she wears. She must be making dinner. “Fire Lord Zuko,” she says, her smile drawn. “To what do we owe this honor?”

“I was… hoping to see Mai.” 

Instantly, Mura’s polite expression tightens. In that moment, Zuko longs to be a normal man, so she would just slam the door in his face like she obviously wants to.

Without taking her eyes off Zuko, she calls behind her. “Mai! The Fire Lord is here to see you.”

A moment of quiet. Then Mai’s voice snaps through the house, the sheer sound of it twisting Zuko’s insides before he even registers what she’s said. 

“Tell him to go fuck himself!”

Zuko laughs, unbidden and slightly delirious. Mura’s face reddens. 

“No,” she calls back, “I don’t think I’ll be doing that.” She smiles again, a strained, apologetic thing, then steps aside and gestures for him to enter. “Why don’t you head up to her room? I’ll bring some tea.”

Shaking his head, Zuko toes off his shoes in the entryway. “Thank you, Mura, but that’s not necessary.” He glances up from his feet, meeting her tumultuous expression. “I really don’t think I’ll be that long.”

The stairs feel miles-long as he climbs them. He runs his fingertips across the wall, and can feel the paneling against his back as he remembers sitting on these steps with Mai, talking for hours. Once, those hours didn't feel like enough. Now, it’s been twenty-three days since he’s seen her.

When he reaches the top, he stands in front of her door and closes his eyes. He tries to run through a calming mantra, but he can’t hold any of them in his mind, just jumbled words.

He raps lightly at the wall beside the door. No reply. He swallows, leans close to the screen. “It’s me, Mai. I’m going to come in, if that’s okay.” Again, no reply. 

“Agni, save me,” he mutters, and slides the door open.

Mai lounges on her low bed, back to him, holding a book. Her windows sit open, gauzy curtains drifting as the breeze bends through them. The small table next to the door, where historically there has been one portrait of Mai’s parents, and one of her and Zuko, harbors only her parents. 

“What do you want?” Mai’s voice crackles, like her throat is tight. She still doesn’t face him. Zuko notices that her hair is all down, snarled at points into tangles. 

“I want to apologize,” he says. When she makes no move, he folds slowly down to his knees. He bends his head low and presses one hand to his heart, the other a trembling fist gripping his pant leg.

“I’ve wronged you terribly, Mai. You trusted me, and I hurt you in your most vulnerable moment. The things I said-” his breath catches, and fuck, he managed to practice this part without crying, but now his eyes sting, “-I said things that no one should ever have to hear, especially not from- a friend.” That last word strangles in his throat. His eyes have pinched shut, he doesn’t know when, and he feels tears drip hot off of his chin. “If I’m not your friend anymore, that’s okay. I’m not here to be forgiven. I’m here to tell you that I know, now, how wrong I was, and that I’m going to change the laws as quickly as I can.” He exhales, long and shaking, the first time he’s remembered to breathe out while speaking.

Quiet. Agonizing quiet. Just the curtains rustling and the sound of Zuko’s own ragged breathing. 

Then, the flutter of book pages. A cover falls closed. Sheets shift, and Mai’s feet land softly on the hardwood floor.

“I’m still angry,” she says.

Zuko nods, eyes still closed, somehow on the verge of laughter and further tears, because she’s talking to him. They’re talking, even if it’s the last time. “You have every right to be angry,” he says. “Be angry as much as you want.”

A small huff, then a fall of fabric and creak from the floor as Mai stands. “I will,” she says. Then, “Okay, you’re embarrassing yourself. Get up.”

Zuko looks up, and sees Mai with her hand outstretched. He blinks at her. She smiles in her sharp, slightly unkind way, then presses her fingers across the front of his tunic and gently pries his hand away from his own lapel, which is desperately wrinkled from his sweaty grip. He allows her to pull him to his feet. He stares down at her, and he knows his best move is probably to stick to what he practiced and not run his mouth, but there’s so much inside of him, affection and pain and regret and wonder and he- he has to tell her.

“Mai, those things I said-”

“I get it.”

“No, I- Please.” He takes her other hand. She looks down. He grips her more tightly. Finally, she tilts her face toward his. There’s fear there, and it guts him. “It’s not wrong,” he says. “ _You’re_ not wrong.”

Her eyes fall. “I know.”

“I know that you know, I- ugh, I’m not- That’s not what I want to say,” he clenches his teeth, and she snorts softly at him, “I just mean that I want you to know that _I_ don’t think it’s wrong. I think you’re- really brave, and I’m so, so sorry that I wasted so much of your time when there was something out there that could have actually made you happy.” It comes out in a rush, hardly thought-out, just a truth wrung out of him by the sight of this woman he cherishes so completely.

Some of the tension washes out of her, a slump of her shoulders and gentling of her brow. “You didn’t waste my time,” she says. “And if you did, I let you. I was… afraid of admitting the truth to myself, for a long time.” She runs her thumbs over the back of his fingers. Zuko can’t count how many times they’ve held hands. It’s never felt like this, so raw, so sincere. “I thought things would be different after I made my choices at the end of the war. Turns out I’m not as changed as I thought I’d be.”

Zuko laughs at that, tears swelling anew. “Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.” He swallows. Spirits, when did his mouth get so dry? 

After a moment, Mai lets go of his hands. He pulls them toward himself and wrings them, instantly unsettled by the lack of contact.

“Um, have you told your aunt?”

“Yeah. Told her first, actually.”

Relief rolls through Zuko, and then a twinge of shame as he realizes that he’s mostly just glad that his reaction wasn’t the first one Mai experienced. “Did she… take it well?”

Mai nods. “Yeah. A lot better than you, at least.”

That hurts, but he deserves it. 

Mai continues, “She had gay friends when she was my age, so. She was understanding. Gave me a shoulder to cry on.”

To _cry_ on, spirits. Zuko can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen Mai cry. 

“I didn’t actually cry,” she says lightly, so apparently he looks as distressed as he feels. “I did kick the shit out of a hedge in the royal garden.”

Zuko startles himself by laughing. “I thought we had loose komodo chickens.”

“I would have kicked them, too.”

Before he can give what would inevitably have been a very unfunny response, Zuko smells something incredible, and his stomach rumbles traitorously. 

Mai raises her brows at him, and he flushes.

“I, uh, skipped lunch.”

Mai rolls her eyes. “Come on.”

She leads him downstairs, where the promise of Mura’s fresh dumplings wafts thickly. Tom-Tom kneels at the table, still in his school uniform, showing a primitive drawing to his aunt. The second he sees Zuko, he screams and jumps up. Zuko has about a half second to prepare for the slam of the joyful boy into his stomach, and almost gets the wind knocked out of him. 

“Uncle Zuko!” Tom-Tom looks up at him with absolute delight, bouncing while he clings to Zuko’s tunic. “You’re here, you’re here! I was worried you’d never come back!” He throws his arms around Zuko again, and this time the squeeze of his little arms brings pressure flooding back to Zuko’s eyes. It’s all he can do not to cry again as he pets Tom-Tom’s ruffled hair.

“Yeah, uh, me too.”

After Tom-Tom finally releases him, he starts chattering breathlessly about everything he’s been doing at school. Zuko crouches down and listens, though he splits his attention toward Mai across the room. She fiddles with the plates stacked on the counter, then turns suddenly and says something into Mura’s ear. Mura looks at Zuko with clear surprise, then turns back and hugs Mai. Mai is stiff in the hug, but she smiles. 

Zuko thinks, desperately, that perhaps things will be okay.

Once Zuko manages to extract himself from Tom-Tom’s attention, Mura sends Mai and him off with a plate of dumplings. As they leave the kitchen, Mai grabs a bottle of saké off of a top shelf.

Before Zuko knows it, he lays flat on his back on Mai’s floor, well-fed and swimming in the pleasant warmth of that place just between buzzed and drunk. Next to him, Mai hums something off-key, her eyes closed and hands folded on her stomach. Moonlight washes the room, barely enough to see by, but both of them are too fuzzy and content to bother lighting a lamp. 

Thoughts ease in and out of focus, concerns rolling languidly off the edges of his mind, powerless against the warmth of Mai’s hip next to his arm.

“You never told me who,” he says.

Mai stops humming. “Mm?”

“You said you’re in love. You didn’t say who she was.”

She doesn’t reply.

“Sorry,” Zuko says, after a moment, “sorry, I shouldn’t push. It’s your feelings. You don’t owe-“

“Ty Lee.” 

Zuko’s mouth drops open. He cranes his head to look up at Mai. “What!?”

“I’m in love with Ty Lee,” Mai says, and holy fuck, he has never seen her blush like that.

“ _Ty Lee!?_ ” he shouts. Mai slaps a hand fiercely down, presumably aiming to cover his mouth but smacking his nose beneath her palm instead. “Ow!”

“Shut up,” she groans.

Zuko shoves her hand away and rolls over onto his elbows. The floor only pitches a little under him. “But she’s so...”

Mai frowns as Zuko searches for an adjective. “Careful,” she warns.

“She’s so- chipper!”

Groaning again, Mai throws the crook of her elbow over her eyes. “Ugh, I know.” 

Zuko stares at her. “Ty Lee?” 

“Will you stop it!?”

“Sorry! Sorry, I mean- she’s a really sweet person? You’re just so different.”

“Yeah.”

“You were… kind of mean to her when we were kids.”

Mai lays the other arm over the rest of her face and moans a muffled, “I know.”

“Why?”

“Because!” Mai throws her hands up, talking at the ceiling. “I liked her so much that I couldn’t stand it! I didn’t know why I was so obsessed with her! It drove me crazy that I didn’t like any of the pink, that I thought the auras were stupid, that she was so happy and nice all the time when I thought I was above all that, and yet I was so drawn to her, I just-” She lets her arms drop to the floor and sighs. “I just lashed out at her because she made me so confused.”

“...How did you figure it out?” 

Mai stares into the middle distance for a moment, then says, “When she chose me over Azula. I never thought- she was so afraid of Azula, Zuko.” She glances over at him. “You get it.” He shrugs one shoulder, nods. She looks away again.

“I always tried to push away my feelings by telling myself that she was dumb. Or shallow. Or that she’d sell me out for Azula in a second. But then…” She shakes her head. “She didn’t even give it a second thought. She committed treason for me. I mean, fuck, would anyone risk lightning for someone they didn’t… love?”

Zuko thinks of electricity warping in Azula’s crazed eyes, of realizing what she planned and knowing in that moment that he would die to protect Katara. “I guess not,” he murmurs.

“I knew, then. All those things I’d told myself were just lies to keep me from getting hurt, in case I wasn’t as important to her as she was to me. But that day, I realized- she wasn’t going to hurt me. Not on purpose. She would never.” She’s so sincere, so intense in that moment, and Zuko’s heart aches.

“Why…” he licks his lips, tries to pick his next words carefully. “Mai, if you knew how you felt about her before the war was even over-”

“Why would I be with you?”

He nods.

She sighs. “Because I was supposed to be. My parents wanted us to be together. You wanted us to be together. Hell, I wanted us to be together. And I knew you so well. I knew that you were good, even if you were a mess.” She gives him a teasing smile, just for a moment. “I trusted you to… Agni, to be the husband I was supposed to have. To be my other half for this life that was laid out in front of me.” She sighs, long and wretched. “You were… safe.”

Zuko remembers what he was thinking about before Mai came out to him: that if he had to marry someone, it might as well be her. His throat feels thick as he swallows. “What changed?”

“Hm. Do you remember Din and Izin’s wedding?”

“Yeah, of course.” 

“Everyone was talking about how they were going to be so happy together, and I just looked at Izin, and I thought, she’s going to be miserable. But she was smiling so beautifully, and she looked at Din like he hung the moon, and I realized I was just imagining myself in that situation. I realized I would be miserable if I married a man. Even you.”

“But I’m such a catch,” Zuko murmurs. Mai bats at the top of his head. “Sorry. I- that makes a lot of sense.” He closes his eyes, and in the darkness, floods with the hollow feeling of entering his father’s war room and thinking, _I don’t want this_. He wonders what it’s like to know what you want. Maybe it would feel like being himself. He doesn’t know if he’s felt like himself since the Day of Black Sun, the first and last time he held lightning without injury.

Maybe knowing would feel like that: overwhelming and frightening and powerful and _right_. 

“How do you know, Mai?”

“What?”

“That you like women. I mean- I know that you _do_ know, just- how? How does it feel?” 

Mai seems to think for a moment. “I don’t know, Zuko. I just… always noticed girls, I guess. I had to make myself look at men, I had to learn that. But I’ve always been so drawn to women.”

The saké feels like it’s bubbling in Zuko’s stomach. His heart races. He curses Mai’s brevity, because he feels like he could listen to her talk about this for hours. “But I mean- how do you know the difference? Everyone notices people of the same gender. I notice guys all the time.”

Mai breathes a small laugh. “Really.”

Zuko swallows. “Yes?”

“Um, that’s not a universal experience.”

“Yeah, it is. Everyone appreciates a- a handsome man.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, that-” Zuko clears his throat. “Is there more saké?”

Mai ignores his question, staring down at him with a truly devilish look. “Which men have you _noticed_ , Zuko?”

Zuko’s face flares so hot that he wouldn’t be surprised if smoke burst from his ears. “I didn’t say-”

“You did.” Mai lashes a foot to kick his hip. “Who is it?”

Zuko looks away. “Mai.”

“ _Zuko_ ,” she says. “I told you mine.”

It’s the slightest uneven pitch of tone in the middle of the word _mine_ that breaks Zuko, because she’s right: she told him everything despite how he’s acted, despite the fear he knows is somewhere under that subdued exterior. She trusted him.

“Fine,” he snaps. Brilliant blue eyes swim before him, brown skin and a flicker of gesturing hands and a feeling of total and complete comfort. His heart hammers. “It’s Suzuk.”

Mai gasps, eyes and smile blown wide by delighted revulsion. “The cook? Gross!” Her nose scrunches. “What is he, sixty?”

“He’s forty-three!” Zuko sits up to shout down at her. “He has a nice smile!”

“A nice smile,” she repeats, and starts to giggle. “Oh, spirits.”

“Shut up!”

“Nice smile,” Mai snickers. 

Zuko lays down on his back. The ceiling twists above him, like oil in water. He thinks of a nice smile. It isn’t Suzuk’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this update feels insanely long! I didn’t want to leave Zuko and Mai’s relationship in turmoil for more than a chapter, but I realized that narratively, a lot of stuff had to come before their reconciliation, so. this monstrosity happened lmao

**Author's Note:**

> I plan to update on sundays?? probably not every sunday though.
> 
> you can find me at crit20lesbian on tumblr!
> 
> as always i really appreciate comments if you're enjoying it! (:
> 
> UPDATE JAN 1st: ok so the next chapter may take a few weeks!! i have unexpectedly started to hyperfixate HARD on The Magnus Archives and i think i need to get the fic idea i have for that out of my system before i can focus on this again lmao. but do not worry; i WILL NOT be abandoning this story! i'm far too excited for what's coming next!!


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